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 Based on data for hundreds of thousands of UK children and teens,
the study found that obese kids were four times as likely as normal
weight children to be diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, which has
already been linked to obesity in adults.
“Obesity is a major global health issue. More than half of adults
and one out of three children leaving primary school are now
overweight or obese,” said lead study author Ali Abbasi of King’s
College London.
More than 12 million children and teens in the United States are
considered obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention. About 3,600 cases of type 2 diabetes are diagnosed in
children and teens each year in the U.S.
“The rapidity of the increase in type 2 diabetes is a real concern,
which may have an important impact on the health of future
generations,” Abbasi told Reuters Health by email.
Abbasi and colleagues looked at records from 375 doctors' offices
across the UK for the years 1994 through 2013. They analyzed data
from 369,362 patients between ages 2 and 15, tracking new cases of
both type 1 and type 2 diabetes and comparing them to children’s
body mass index (BMI), a measure of weight relative to height, over
time.
There were 654 type 2 diabetes cases and 1,318 type 1 diabetes cases
diagnosed during the study period.
The incidence of type 2 diabetes among the children rose from 6.4
cases per 100,000 people per year in 1994 - 1998 to 33.2 cases per
100,000 per year in 2009 - 2013, the study team reports in Journal
of the Endocrine Society.
The increase took place primarily among overweight and obese
children, and the greatest risk was seen among the obese kids.
During the same period, the increase in proportion of kids who were
obese stabilized, the researchers note, but BMIs among obese
children rose, meaning obesity became more severe.
Type 1 diabetes incidence also rose, though less dramatically, from
38.2 cases per 100,000 per year to 52.1 per 100,000 per year over
the study period but there was no link to overweight or obesity.
“Unfortunately, little surprises me about the findings of this
study, since we have been reporting an increasing risk of type 2
diabetes in children in the Pima Indians since the 1970s,” said
Robert Nelson of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive
and Kidney Diseases office in Phoenix, who wasn’t involved with the
study.
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“The next steps are to carefully characterize the magnitude of
obesity and its impact on diabetes incidence,” he told Reuters
Health by email. “We are finding in American Indians that children
who are severely obese have a far higher incidence than those who
are obese or overweight.”
Nelson and colleagues are studying ways to manage pregnancy weight
gain and prevent gestational diabetes in mothers, which increases
the risk of the child developing diabetes early in life.
“Understanding the relationship between obesity and diabetes in kids
is important because diabetes can actually develop in children while
they’re still children,” said Asheley Skinner of Duke University in
Durham, North Carolina, who wasn’t involved with the study.
“One important aspect to note is that about half of kids who develop
type 2 diabetes aren’t obese,” she told Reuters Health. “Those who
are obese have four times the risk, but that only represents part of
equation. Obesity isn’t the only important risk factor here.”
“We spend a lot of time and effort on trying to reduce obesity, and
it’s often not successful,” Skinner said. “We should use diet and
activity in all kids to reduce the risk for diabetes, as well as
other diseases later in life.”
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2p7zbxT Journal of the Endocrine Society,
online April 25, 2017.
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