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 Researchers followed the fates of millions of Israeli teenagers
weighed at age 17, and found a steady increase in the likelihood of
death from diabetes-related causes up to age 70 that was tied to
heavier weights in the teen years.
“This study provides further evidence for the urgent need for firm
public health actions to overcome the childhood obesity epidemic, as
its devastating impact on human health is currently underestimated,”
said coauthor Hagai Levine of Hebrew University-Hadassah School of
Public Health and Community Medicine in Jerusalem.
“Overall, elevated BMI at adolescence, including values within the
currently accepted ‘normal’ range, strongly increase risk of
diabetes mortality later in life,” Levine told Reuters Health by
email.
The researchers used data on more than 2 million Israeli adolescents
who underwent a physical examination when they were evaluated for
military service between 1967 and 2010. The study team then grouped
the teens based on age, sex and body mass index (BMI), a measure of
weight relative to height.
Following the entire group in national medical records, researchers
found 481 deaths with diabetes mellitus listed as the underlying
cause. The average age at death was 50 years, and diabetes caused
about 1.5 percent of all deaths in the group during the follow-up
period.
“Diabetes deaths are sufficiently common to be concerned about,”
said Majid Ezzati, chair of global and environmental health at
Imperial College London, who was not involved in the study. “More
importantly, the results could also imply an increased risk of
diabetes disease which leads to long term morbidity and to other
conditions like heart disease and kidney disease.”
BMIs between 18.5 and 24.9 are usually considered to be in the
healthy range, 25 to 29.9 is considered overweight and 30 or above
is considered obese.
The researchers found that starting at a BMI of 22.4, well within
the normal range, as teenage BMI rose, the risk of eventual death
from diabetes gradually increased as well. Teens with a BMI between
18 and 20 had the lowest overall risk of later dying from diabetes,
according to the report in Diabetes Care.
Less than 10 percent of 17-year-olds were overweight or obese in
this group in the years 1967 to 1977, which increased to 20 percent
of teens examined between 2012 and 2014, researchers note.
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“The part of these results that many people will find surprising is
that there is a higher likelihood of diabetes-related death even
when, as teenagers, individuals were within the ‘normal’ weight
range, but on the heavier end of it,” said Asheley Skinner of the
Duke Clinical Research Institute in Durham, North Carolina.
Teens shouldn’t be worried about dying from diabetes, but should be
worried about developing a healthy diet and making physical activity
part of their daily lives, regardless of current weight, said
Skinner, who wasn’t involved in the study.
“Teens who are already struggling with obesity should focus on using
diet and activity to maintain weight and prevent the severity of
obesity from worsening,” she said by email. “Obesity and type 2
diabetes are both part of complicated metabolic system that we are
still learning a lot about,” Skinner said.
“One of the major limitations of this study is that they don’t have
adult BMI. It’s possible that once you consider the effect of adult
BMI, teen BMI would no longer be an important factor,” she
cautioned. “In other words, it’s possible that obesity as a teen
itself is not the problem, but rather that teens with obesity are
more likely to become adults with obesity.”
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2eH3Q1G Diabetes Care, online October 12,
2016.
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