American Children in the Grip of Type 1 Diabetes Crisis

Diabetic cases among young children are shooting up in the country, a new study says.

Lead study author Terri Lipman from the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing and colleagues found more and more young children getting  type 1 diabetes diagnosis recently, Reuters Health reported.

For getting an exact idea about the number of children affected with diabetes in the country, researchers looked at a diabetes registry in Philadelphia that contained information of children affected with diabetes from 1985.

They found a 70 percent increase in diabetes cases among children aged below five and a 29 percent increase among children aged below 14 in 2004 compared to past. Newly diagnosed cases also saw an increase in 2004 (13.4 of every 100,000 children) compared to 1985 (17.2).

However, the researchers couldn't find out the exact factors that lead to this occurrence.

"Why are we seeing this large increase in type 1 diabetes in very young children? Unfortunately, the answer is we don't know," Lapman told Reuters health.

The study has been published in Diabetes Care.

Earlier, in November, an estimate from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found diabetes-related mortality among children and teens declining by 61 percent from 1968 to 2009.

According previous reports, every year about 150,000 children in the country are diagnosed with diabetes. Type 1 diabetes occurs when pancreatic cells (produce hormone insulin that regulates blood sugar in the body) are destroyed by immune system of the body. Type 1 diabetes requires daily insulin injections to survive.

In Type 2 diabetes, body develops resistance to insulin. Type 2 diabetes normally affects people aged 40 or above. However, recently there was a huge increase among children affected with this type of diabetes. Children with diabetes are at risks of developing a series of health risks like heart disease, kidney disease, blindness and stroke.