Child Diabetes Rates Dramatically Rise

Diabetes rates among children in the United States have skyrocketed in the last eight years, according to the results of a new study.

The results were presented by head researcher Dr. Dana Dabelea of the Colorado School of Public Health this past weekend at the Pediatric Academic Societies annual meeting in Vancouver, Canada.

According to Dabelea's findings, the number of children diagnosed with type one diabetes has increased by 21 percent  between 2001 and 2009. Additionally, type two diabetes rates in children have risen by 30.5 percent over the same period of time.

Causes for a spike in type two diabetes rates may be easy to explain. Type two diabetes develops as a result of genetic factors and poor health habits influencing one another and negatively affecting the way the body uses its insulin. For this, rising teen obesity and high cholesterol rates in the U.S. may be to blame.

Still, according to Dabelea, obesity rates do not explain why type one diabetes has also seen such an alarming rise. Type one diabetes is an autoimmune disorder that causes the body to mistakenly prevent the production of insulin -- a hormone that is essential for converting sugars into energy the body can use.

 The scientists team reportedly found that in 2001, only about 5,000 children from a group of more than three million youth had been diagnosed with type one diabetes. However, by 2009 the number of diagnoses had risen to nearly 6,700. Interestingly, for the great majority of these new diagnoses, only children past the age of four were exhibiting signs of type one diabetes.

According to the results of the study, these increases affected both genders and all racial groups evenly, indicating high likelihood that the cause may be environmental.

"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," Dabelea explained to her colleagues and peers in Vancouver on Saturday.

However, Dr. Robert Ratner, chief medical and scientific officer for the American Diabetes Association told Health Day that the simple fact of the matter is that technology and treatment for diabetics in general has improved within the last few decades, meaning that diabetics are living longer and having children of their own. Researchers already have revealed that genetic factors play a huge role in the development of diabetes, so it stands to reason that if more diabetics are having children, a greater portion of the future generations are going to have diabetes.

These findings were presented at the Pediatric Academic Societies annual meeting in Vancouver, Canada on May 3, and should be viewed as preliminary findings until official publication.

The full study is scheduled to be published in the Journal of the American Medical Association on May 7.