Dramatic Increase of Children Suffering from Diabetes

Statistics show that the rate of children suffering from type 1 and 2 diabetes has dramatically increased in the last eight years.

"While we do not completely understand the reasons for this increase, since the causes of type 1 diabetes are still unclear, it is likely that something has changed in our environment, both in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world, causing more youth to develop the disease, maybe at increasingly younger ages," said lead researcher Dr. Dana Dabelea, the associate dean for faculty at the Colorado School of Public Health in Aurora, via Health Day.

For the study, researchers examined data on over three million young children and teens collected from centers in California, Colorado, Ohio, South Carolina, Washington state and some Native American reservations in Arizona and New Mexico. The team examined adolescents aged 19 or younger for the type 1 diabetes cases, while children between the ages of 10 and 19 were examined for type 2.

Findings revealed that from 2001 to 2009, the incident rate of type 1 diabetes went from 5,000 to around 6,700, or a 21 percent spike. For type 2 diabetes, the numbers jumped from 588 to 819, or about 30 percent.

The only groups that did not experience a rise in type 2 diabetes cases were American Indians and Asian Pacific Islanders.

More information regarding the findings were presented at the Pediatric Academic Societies yearly meeting in Vancouver, Canada and will be published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.