A nationally representative study in the USA has confirmed that from 2001 to 2009 the incidence of both Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes increased in children and adolescents across racial groups. The prevalence of Type 1 diabetes increased 21% among children up to age 19, the study found, while the prevalence of Type 2 diabetes among those ages 10 to 19 rose 30% during the period.
“These are big numbers,” says Dr. Robin S. Goland, a co-director of the Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center at Columbia University Medical Center in New York, who has been in practice for 25 years. “In my career, Type 1 diabetes was a rare disease in children, and Type 2 disease didn’t exist. And I’m not that old.”
The analysis, published in the journal of the American Medical Association, includes data from more than three million children younger than 20 in five states — California, Colorado, Ohio, South Carolina and Washington — as well as from selected American Indian reservations.