Sharp increase in diabetes among children in past 20 yrs

The number of children with diabetes increased about three times in the Czech Republic in the past two decades and diabetes has become one of the most frequent chronic diseases children suffer from, Jan Lebl, head physician of Prague's Motol Teaching Hospital's paediatric clinic, said yesterday.

Younger and younger children fall ill with diabetes. The increase is the sharpest, up to four times, among children under four years, Lebl told journalists.

The Motol clinic's child diabetology centre ranks among Europe's first twelve centres with the prestigious international title "Centre of Excellence."

Zdenek Sumnik, a doctor from the centre, said analyses have shown that its treatment results are comparable with similar facilities in France and Britain.

"From the viewpoint of the application of modern technologies, we don't lag behind [advanced countries] at all," Sumnik said.

Type 1 diabetes is the most common form of diabetes in children: 90-95 per cent of under 16s with diabetes have this type.

It is caused by the inability of the pancreas to produce insulin.

Type 1 diabetes is classified as an autoimmune disease, meaning a condition in which the body's immune system 'attacks' one of the body's own tissues or organs.

In Type 1 diabetes it's the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas that are destroyed.

He said children most often suffer from the type 1 diabetes, when the body is unable to produce insulin, which must be provided to it.

Fast Facts on Diabetes

Diabetes affects 25.8 million people of all ages
8.3 percent of the U.S. population

DIAGNOSED
18.8 million people

UNDIAGNOSED
7.0 million people

Among U.S. residents ages 65 years and older, 10.9 million, or 26.9 percent, had diabetes in 2010.
About 215,000 people younger than 20 years had diabetes—type 1 or type 2—in the United States in 2010.
About 1.9 million people ages 20 years or older were newly diagnosed with diabetes in 2010 in the United States.
In 2005–2008, based on fasting glucose or hemoglobin A1C (A1C) levels, 35 percent of U.S. adults ages 20 years or older had pre-diabetes—50 percent of adults ages 65 years or older. Applying this percentage to the entire U.S. population in 2010 yields an estimated 79 million American adults ages 20 years or older with pre-diabetes.
Diabetes is the leading cause of kidney failure, nontraumatic lower-limb amputations, and new cases of blindness among adults in the United States.