Updated 10:23 AM May 07, 2012
NEW YORK - A study of diabetes in overweight and obese youngsters bears an ominous warning about future health care trends in the United States. It found that Type 2 diabetes, a new scourge among young people, progresses faster and is harder to treat in youngsters than in adults. The toll on their health as they grow older could be devastating.
These findings provide more evidence of why the country must get the obesity epidemic under control to improve health and to curb soaring health care costs.
Only two decades ago Type 2 diabetes was called "adult-onset diabetes" because it was seldom found in young people, who suffered primarily from Type 1, in which the patient's immune system destroys cells that make insulin, a hormone needed to control blood sugar levels. Type 2, thought to be brought on by obesity and inactivity in many people, has increased alarmingly and accounts for almost a fifth of newly diagnosed cases in young people.
Obesity increases the risk of many chronic diseases. And some 17 per cent of American children from age 2 to 19 are now considered obese, roughly half the rate of obesity among adults.
The new study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, tested three ways to attain durable control of blood sugar in youngsters between the ages of 10 and 17. None worked very well. Almost half of the 699 youngsters had to add daily shots of insulin within a few years to lower their blood sugar.
Metformin, the standard drug used to treat Type 2 diabetes in children, failed to control blood sugar in more than half of the children. When life-style changes, including one-on-one counselling on how to lead a healthy life, were added to metformin, the results were only marginally better.
When a second drug was added, the results were significantly better. But the two-drug treatment still failed in 39 per cent of the recipients, and the added drug, Avandia, has been linked to heart attacks and strokes in adults.
The findings are especially ominous because poorly controlled diabetes can lead to heart disease, stroke, blindness, amputations, and kidney failure. The longer one has the disease, the greater the risk, so the fact that children are starting so young bodes ill for their futures.
Some experts suggest that young patients at risk of diabetes need to be detected earlier and treated more aggressively. But the long-term goal should be prevention of obesity and of diabetes. THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.todayonline.com/World/EDC120507-0000080/Type-2-diabetes-harder-to-treat-in-youngsters--study
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