Youth With Type 2 Diabetes at Much Higher Risk For Heart, Kidney and Eye Problems

As the occurrence of Type 2 diabetes among the youth is becoming more common, it is offering a fresh impetus to researchers to further probe into the matter.

Latest data from the national TODAY diabetes study reveals that children who are being diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes are at an increased risk of developing kidney, eye and heart problems faster and at a higher rate than people who develop Type 2 diabetes as adults.

Jane Lynch, M.D., professor of pediatric endocrinology in the School of Medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, said in a press release that once a child develops Type 2 diabetes, he/she is at a higher risk for early complications when compared to adults.

To prove the hypothesis, the UT  pediatricians conducted a study on 699 children and young people along with 44 participants from San Antonio.

According to Dr. Lynch, there are a few guidelines recommended for treating youth with early onset of Type 2 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes is different from Type 1 diabetes, formerly known as juvenile diabetes. The two should not be confused.

Among the participants, more than a third required medication for hypertension or kidney disease 3.9 years after they joined the study. The 699 adolescent participants were randomly divided into three groups in which one received metformin, another metformin plus rosiglitazone and the last group received metformin plus intensive lifestyle intervention. Out of the three groups those with combined drugs did the best and the remaining did poorly. The intensive lifestyle intervention group did not also do better.

They noticed that in these youth the rate of deterioration of the beta cell (that store and release insulin) function was four times higher when compared to adults and per year on average, there was 20-35 percent decline, whereas in adults it is 7-11 percent. Youth with Type 2 diabetes have difficulty in managing complex heath issues.

"In puberty, everyone becomes somewhat insulin-resistant and when you're insulin-resistant you're hungry, plus when you have diabetes you're thirsty. This becomes a huge issue when there's the tendency to make poor choices." Dr. Lynch said in the press statement

The researchers noticed a general deterioration in health among the participants despite medications and treatments. They noticed there were no gender differences although obesity played a major role in disease progression. "Obese teenage boys were 81 percent more likely to develop hypertension," Dr. Lynch said. "What's especially challenging for these children is that many also develop fatty liver, which limits our use of the drugs that control hypertension."

The study was published in the journal Diabetes Care.