ADA: One in Three Children Will
Develop Diabetes!
One in three American children born in
2000 will develop diabetes in his or her lifetime,
according to a new CDC report.
Doctor K.M. Venkat Narayan, MD, Chief of the
Diabetes Epidemiology Section at the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia,
United States, presented the findings at the American
Diabetes Association 63rd Annual Scientific Sessions.
Dr. Narayan said he undertook the study because
despite the increasing prevalence of diabetes
in the United States and other developed nations,
no one had performed a study looking at the lifetime
risk of developing the disease.
Dr. Narayan used data from the annual National
Health Interview Surveys of a representative sample
of 360,000 Americans from 1983 to 2000 to estimate
age-, sex- and ethnicity-specific prevalence and
incidence rates for diabetes for the year 2000.
Then, data from the U.S. Census Bureau data and
from a previous study of death rates among people
with diabetes were used to estimate mortality
rates for people with and without the disease.
All the estimates were then entered into a Markov
model to calculate the residual lifetime risk
of diabetes, Dr. Narayan said.
The study showed that 33% of boys and 39% of
girls born in 2000 will develop diabetes in their
lifetime. Hispanic children face the worse odds
of developing the disease: 45% of the boys and
53% of the girls will become diabetic, the model
predicted. Black boys and girls stand a 40 and
45% risk of developing diabetes in their lifetimes,
respectively, while for white boys and girls,
the comparable figures are 27% and 31%, Dr. Narayan
said.
The residual lifetime risk remained higher for
females than for males at all decades of life,
declining to 22.4% for females and 18.9% for males
at age 60 years, and to 6.9 and 5.2%, respectively,
at age 80 years, the study showed.
"The life expectancy of women is longer,
which alone would increase lifetime risk,"
Dr. Narayan said. Factors related to pregnancy
such as gestational diabetes may also be at play,
he added.
Dr. Narayan said that an American man diagnosed
with diabetes at age 40 will die 12 years sooner
than he would have had he not developed the disease.
In contrast, a woman diagnosed at that age will
have 14 years shaved off her lifespan.
"We knew that the diabetes rate was increasing,
but this finding was dramatic even to us,"
Dr. Narayan said. The projected lifetime risk
is about three times higher than the American
Diabetes Association's current estimate, he said.
"The message to physicians is to stress
to their patients that while all of this is frightening,
there is a lot of hope," he said in an interview.
"With simple lifestyle changes, patients
can decrease their risk of developing diabetes
by more than 50%."
Last year, the Diabetes Prevention Program trial
of 3,234 overweight people with pre-diabetes showed
that at 3 years, participants who modified their
lifestyles slashed their risk of developing type
2 diabetes by 58%, compared with those taking
placebo.
[Study title: Lifetime Risk for Diabetes Mellitus
in the United States. Abstract 967-P]
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FACT:
Folic Acid Improves Endothelial Function in Children
and Adolescent with Type 1 Diabetes.
Short-term Folic Acid improves endothelial function
in children and adolescents with type 1 diabetes.
It may therefore have a role in the prevention
of the vascular complications of diabetes. ADA
63rd Annual Scientific Sessions, Oral presentation.
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