cholesterol deposits on skin around pump insertion sites?

My son, age 23 was diagnosed at 16. He uses an insulin pump and has noticed skin changes on the lateral sides of his abdomen where he inserts his sites. The areas are small and slightly lighter in color than his skin, they are flat or slightly raised, don't hurt and are not necessarily around the area of his current site. Two college health center doctors said they do not know what it is but they said it looks like the cholesterol deposits that people get around their eyes. Is it possible that cholesterol is depositing around his "sites" as blood leaks out with insertion and removal.Have you ever heard of this?

[JDRF-Team-BL]

i'm sorry but i've never heard of cholesterol sites but have heard of changes in the fat deposites around insertion site. i would ask the physicians what can be done about them.i have been on an insulin pump for about four years or so now and have never experienced any problms like this. But i do keep in touch with doctors to ask if something does arise. bret.

[raghda]

There are reports about Vitiligo associated with pump therapy and Lispro.

Vitiligo vulgaris, the loss of skin pigmentation, is known to occur with increased frequency in patients with type 1 diabetes and, based on a preponderance of circumstantial evidence , presumed to be of autoimmune etiology.
For example, 20% of 39 patients with vitiligo were found to have diabetes in a Romanian community study , and 9% of 457 consecutive Italian patients with diabetes had vitiligo in another study (including 54% of the type 1 patients).


You can download the article from here :
http://care.diabetesjournals.org/cgi/reprint/27/1/281.pdf

[TJey]

I was interested to read about your sons deposits at his infusion sites.  I use syringe driver pumps on my son (every week for ~10 years) for a completely different condition and he too as recently started to develop non painful, pale & slightly raised deposits at two of his infusion sites.  These deposits are more noticable when he is standing.  They were noted by his specialists, however, they were unable to provide an explanation as to what they may be. Maybe they are related to the procedure?? I would be really interested to know if you get know what they are.