What Causes Diabetes Insipidus

What Causes Diabetes Insipidus

Diabetes Insipidus is a disorder with an abnormality of increase in urine output, fluid intake and often thirst. It has the symptoms like frequent urinary, nocturia or enuresis causing urination during sleep. Output of urine is more as it is not concentrated normally. Instead of being a yellow color, the urine can be colorless, pale or watery in appearance and the measured concentration is less. This article helps to know detail information of what causes diabetes Insipidus.

Signs and Symptoms of Diabetes Insipidus

  • Intense Thirst: Patients feel like drinking water all the time. The constant dry feeling and thirst are common even after you consume large amounts of water.
  • Polyuria: It means excretion of large quantities of urine. Output of urine ranges from 2.5 per day to 15 liters per day, as compared to about 1.5 to 2.5 liters per day in other adults without the condition.

Patients feel like they need to pass pale, watery urine often after every 15 to 20 minutes. This makes it hard to be out of the house if there is no toilet nearby. In most of the countries, patients get toilet facility card that lets them use toilets in non-public places. Other signs and symptoms can be:

  • Nocturia: Getting up from sleep to urinate. Disrupted sleeping patterns lead to fatigue, concentration problems, and irritability.
  • Enuresis: It means bed-wetting
  • Not Feeling Well: Patients feel run down for much of the time

Signs and Symptoms in Young Children with Diabetes Insipidus

  • Inconsolable crying
  • Delayed growth (failure to thrive)
  • Diapers which are excessively wet
  • Diarrhea
  • Dry skin
  • Cool hands and feet
  • Loss in weight
  • Unexplained fussiness
  • Fever
  • Vomiting

What Causes Diabetes Insipidus?

Our kidneys get out excess body fluids from our bloodstream. This fluid waste gets stored as urine in the bladder. When our body fluid levels drop, it is because our kidneys make less urine to maintain a proper body fluid level balance.

Diabetes Insipidus happens when your body fails to regulate and handle fluids. Usually, your kidneys take out excess body fluids from your bloodstream. This waste gets temporarily stored in bladder as urine, before you urinate. When your fluid regulation is working properly, your kidneys produces less urine when your body water gets lessen like through perspiration to preserve fluid.

It is an uncommon condition occurring when the kidneys fail to conserve water as they perform their function of filtering blood. The water amount conserved is controlled by antidiuretic hormone which is also called vasopressin. It is a hormone made in a region of the brain called the hypothalamus. It gets stored and released from the pituitary gland, which is a small gland at the base of the brain. Diabetes Insipidus caused due to lack of ADH is known as central diabetes Insipidus. When it is caused due to failure of kidneys to respond to ADH, the condition is nephrogenic diabetes Insipidus.

Central diabetes Insipidus can be caused due to damage to the pituitary gland resulting:

  • Infection
  • Tumor
  • Surgery
  • Head injury

It is also a type of central diabetes Insipidus commonly found in families.

Nephrogenic DI is a defect in the kidneys’ part that reabsorbs water back into the bloodstream. It happens less often compared to central DI. Nephrogenic DI can happen as an inherited disorder where male children get the abnormal gene getting the disease from their mothers. It is also caused by:

  • Certain drugs like amphotericin B, lithium and demeclocycline
  • Kidney disease like polycystic kidney disease
  • High levels of calcium in the body

Gestational Diabetes Insipidus

It happens during pregnancy, when an enzyme made by the placenta - the system of blood vessels and other tissue allowing the exchange of waste products and nutrients between a mother and her baby destroys ADH in the mother.

Dipsogenic Diabetes Insipidus

In such type of DI, which is known as primary polydipsia, the excessive fluid intake leads to suppression of ADH. Drinking too much liquid can be the result of abnormal thirst caused by damage to the thirst-regulating mechanism, situated in the hypothalamus. Diseases like sarcoidosis can cause such damage. Dipsogenic DI also can be caused due to mental illness.

In most of the cases, doctors fail to determine what causes diabetes Insipidus.