Diabetes in children: At Wake Forest University School of Medicine, researchers reported that non-Hispanic black and Hispanic children and young adults also had higher rates of diabetes. The study appears online in the current issue of The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology.
Professor and director of public health sciences at Wake Forest University School of Medicine and principal, Lynn E. “Our research suggests a growing population of young adults with diabetes who are at risk of developing complications from the disease,” Wagenknecht said. Investigator.
“This is a troubling trend in young people whose health care needs will exceed those of their peers.” The findings are from the final report of the Findings for Diabetes in Youth study, the largest surveillance effort of diabetes in youth under the age of 20 conducted in the US to date. Wake Forest University School of Medicine served as the coordinating center for the multi-site study, which was launched in 2000 and supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health.
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The research team identified more than 18,000 children and youth from infants to age 19 with a physician diagnosis of type 1 diabetes and more than 5,200 youth between the ages of 10 and 19 with type 2 diabetes at five centers in the US. 2002 and 2018.
The annual incidence of type 1 diabetes was 22.2 per 100,000 and 17.9 per 100,000 for type 2 diabetes in 2017-18. The incidence of type 2 diabetes increased by 5.3% per year,” Wagenknecht said.
Racial and ethnic groups also had higher rates of growth than non-Hispanic white children. Specifically, the annual percentage increase for type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes was highest for Asian or Pacific Islander, Hispanic and non-Hispanic black children and young people. The peak age at diagnosis was 10 years for type 1 diabetes and 16 years for type 2 diabetes.
The researchers also noted that the onset of type 1 diabetes typically occurs in the winter with a peak in January. Possible explanations for this season include fluctuations in daylight hours, low levels of vitamin D and an increase in viral infections.
For type 2 diabetes, the peak onset was August. Researchers attribute this to an increase in sports physicals and routine health screenings that occur more frequently at the beginning of the academic school year. “These findings will help guide focused prevention efforts,” Wagenknecht said. “Now that we have a better understanding of risk factors, the next step of our research will be studying the underlying pathophysiology of young-onset diabetes.”