Although dry mouth is one of the typical symptoms of diabetes mellitus, the characteristics and severity of dry mouth cannot be used to determine whether diabetes mellitus is present.
In addition to dry mouth, diabetes can also present with acute metabolic disturbances such as excessive drinking, polyuria, polyphagia, weight loss, itchy skin and blurred vision. Diabetes can be diagnosed when a patient presents with these symptoms and has a random blood glucose ≥ 11.1 mmol/L, or a fasting blood glucose ≥ 7.0 mmol/L and a 2h glucose load test ≥ 11.1 mmol/L. The higher the blood glucose value in diabetic patients, the more severe the dry mouth symptoms often are.
Therefore, although the characteristics of dry mouth do not clearly indicate the diagnosis of diabetes, they can reflect to some extent the good or bad glycaemic control of diabetic patients.
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