DENVER (Sept. 29, 2006) – About one in every 523 children and adolescents in the United States had physician-diagnosed diabetes in 2001, according to estimates from a major national study called SEARCH for Diabetes in Youth.
SEARCH is the largest surveillance effort of diabetes among youth under the age of 20 conducted in the United States to date, said Dana Dabelea, MD, PhD, an associate professor of preventive medicine at the University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center’s School of Medicine, and SEARCH principal investigator. Co-investigators at UCDHSC include Richard Hamman, MD, a professor of preventive medicine, and Georgeanna Klingensmith, MD, a professor of pediatrics.
In a report in the October issue of Pediatrics, study investigators estimated about 154,000 of roughly 81 million children and adolescents nationwide had diabetes in 2001, the most recent year for which national statistics are available. The number of youths with diabetes varies across major U.S. racial, ethnic and age groups.
In children 0-9 years of age, non-Hispanic white children had the highest rate (about one in every 1,000 children). In this age group across all racial and ethnic groups, physician-diagnosed type 1 diabetes – previously known as insulin-dependent diabetes – was the most common form of diabetes. The study found that type 2 diabetes was extremely rare in children under age 10 in all racial and ethnic groups.
Among adolescents and young adults, black or African American and non-Hispanic white youth had the highest overall burden of diabetes (about one in every 315) and Asian/Pacific Islander had the lowest (about one in 746). Type 1 diabetes was the most common form of diabetes in all racial and ethnic groups except in American Indian youth.
Type 2 diabetes was found in all racial and ethnic groups in youths 10 to 19. It represented only 6 percent of the cases of diabetes among non-Hispanic whites, 33 percent among blacks, 40 percent among Asian/Pacific Islanders, but was the most common form of diabetes at 76 percent among American Indian youth.
“The study was funded precisely because there was such a lack of systematically collected population-based prevalence data, especially for type 2 diabetes,” said lead author Angela D. Liese, PhD, MPH of the University of South Carolina in Columbia.
The study was funded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) and involves six clinical centers in Colorado, California, Hawaii, Ohio, South Carolina and Washington. The central laboratory for the study is the Northwest Lipid Research Laboratories in Seattle. The coordinating center is at the Division of Public Health Sciences at Wake Forest University School of Medicine.
“This important study has been extremely challenging due to the great difficulty of accurately finding all the cases of diabetes in this age group,” said Michael Engelgau, MD, acting director of the Division of Diabetes Translation at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“However, the effort is well worth it. This information will be critical to understanding this disease in children, which will lead to actions to better control it and to minimize its effects on our younger generation,” Engelgau added.
For her part, Judith Fradkin, MD, director of the Division of Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolic Diseases at the NIDDK, said, “This study addresses an important gap in our knowledge, providing national estimates on the prevalence of type 1 and type 2 diabetes in children.”
The UCDHSC’s Hamman said study investigators would continue to track the incidence of diabetes cases in all of the various population groups over the next few years.
The study’s researchers concluded that diabetes is one of the leading chronic diseases in childhood and adolescence. The prevalence of 1.82 per 1,000 is higher, for instance, than the rate of 1.24 per 1,000 for cancer, but lower than asthma (120 per 1,000).
“Diabetes affects quality of life severely for these youth, has a major impact on their families, and has a significant public health impact,” the investigators said in the report. “Persons diagnosed with diabetes before 20 years of age have a markedly lower life expectancy than the general population without diabetes.”
The UCDHSC School of Medicine faculty work to advance science and improve care as the physicians, educators and scientists at University of Colorado Hospital, The Children’s Hospital, Denver Health, National Jewish Medical and Research Center and the Veterans Administration Medical Center. The school is part of the University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center, one of three universities in the University of Colorado system. For more information, visit the Web site at www.uchsc.edu or the UCDHSC Newsroom at http://www.uchsc.edu/news.