Little Jack Neighbour could be suffering from a rare type of diabetes that affects just one in 400,000.

Jack remains on four injections of insulin a day while experts continue tests into the condition that affects just two people a year in Britain.

Mum Emma, herself a nurse on Southend Hospital's diabetes ward, knows more than most about the symptoms.

Doctors originally feared he could be the youngest diagnosed sufferer. But they now hope it could be a condition he could grow out of in months.

Diabetes was the last thing Emma suspected when new-born Jack was losing weight rapidly and drinking copiously.

Doctors expected Jack's blood sugar to be low. In fact, the level was so high it shot off the monitor.

Originally doctors feared diabetic ketoacidosis - abnormally high levels of ketones - or acids produced by the breakdown of fat in the blood.

Emma, 27, who has another son, Thomas, 14 months, but has also suffered one stillbirth, said: "It is like a diabetic crisis - out of control. Doctors thought it would only last a day or so but it carried on.

"After losing one baby I was terrified I was going to lose him as well. I had never read any literature on diabetes in babies of his age.

"Great Ormond Street Hospital had never looked after a new-born baby with it, so there was no point in transferring him there. Liverpool Children's Hospital said it had no experience of it."

Eventually doctors were put in touch with Southampton Hospital where a study on transient neonatal diabetes is based.

Emma said: "We are hoping that is what he has got, as it normally resolves itself in the first year."

Meanwhile, Jack, also born with a cleft lip, is on four injections of insulin a day.

Emma said: "What doctors are most worried about is his blood sugar going too low when he could start fitting. We just have to be careful. He is as happy as Larry and eats like a horse."

Karen Temple, a consultant in clinical genetics for Wessex Genetics Service working on the British Diabetic Association-funded research study, said: "If it is not realised that the baby is hyperglycaemic, it can be serious.

"It is a condition present probably from birth, due to a genetic change on chromosome 6. But it gets better by about four months of age."

Sufferers can be susceptible to developing type 2 diabetes as they get older - but it is easier to treat than juvenile diabetes.

Little fighter - Jack may be the youngest ever diagnosed sufferer of a rare kind of diabetes

Picture: MAXINE CLARKE

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