Diabetes and Kids

Remember when Type-2 diabetes was called "Adult Onset Type-2 Diabetes?" This was only a few years ago and the name was changed because there are now so many children developing the condition.


The new issue (August 2006) of the Journal of the American Medical Association includes the findings of a study showing the consequences of this new trend, which involved looking at the Pima Indians in Arizona. Members of this tribe have a very high rate of both obesity and diabetes.


National Institutes of Health researchers have been studying this group since 1965. 1865 participants developed diabetes, and 96 of them developed the condition during childhood. The average age for the children was 17, but there were cases of diabetes in children as young as 3 1/2. In the years of follow-up, 16% of those children developed end-stage kidney failure or died from kidney disease by the age of 55, as compared with only 8% of those who developed diabetes after age 20. Researchers concluded that the incidence of end-stage kidney failure was almost 5 times higher in people who developed diabetes before 20 than if diabetes developed in adulthood.
There are a couple of reasons for this. First, when diabetes develops early in life, there are more years for the disease to adversely affect health. But also, during childhood, kidneys and other organs are still maturing and therefore may be more vulnerable to this type of damage.


This situation is heartbreaking. All of us expect to die before our children, and there is nothing worse than the death of a child. Children who develop serious health complications at such early ages will most certainly experience a shorter life span. As a mom, just contemplating this issue while writing this causes me great discomfort.


Type 2 diabetes is a completely avoidable disease in most cases. It is also almost always reversible if people are willing to do the right things. This is our wake up call to get very diligent about improving children's health. Think about this the next time you are thinking about whether or not to be the "food nazi" in your own household and whether or not to get active in your own community to advocate for positive change.