Title: Obesity in Children Quadruples Their Risk of Type 2 Diabetes
Headings: Obesity in Children Quadruples Their Risk of Type 2 Diabetes
Obesity in Children Quadruples Their Risk of Type 2 Diabetes
Type 2 Diabetes Rising in Parallel With Obesity

Content: We have to invest in…research projects to understand the trends, including trends in obesity, in this generation of children and how we should prioritize prevention and interventions in the future." Although recent studies have suggested that approximately one-third of children in the United Kingdom are overweight or obese, there has been little study of the association between obesity and temporal trends in the incidence of diabetes in this age group. In the United States, a recent analysis of private healthcare insurance claims data showed that the number of children and adolescents diagnosed with type 2 diabetes has more than doubled in recent years, and the increase appears to be coincident with a rise in obesity rates. Type 2 Diabetes Rising in Parallel With Obesity
Dr Abbasi and colleagues therefore examined medical health records from the UK Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD) database, comprising 375 primary-care practices in England. Specifically, they collected demographic data on individuals aged 2 to 15 years who had their body mass index (BMI) measured between 1994 and 2013, alongside any diagnosis of diabetes more than 12 months after the start of an individual's CPRD record. Children were deemed to have type 1 diabetes if they were prescribed insulin but not an oral glucose-lowering medication. Type 2 diabetes was defined as: a diagnosis of the disease, an oral glucose-lowering medication prescription only, or a diabetes mellitus diagnosis/HbA 1c ≥6.5% without an insulin prescription. The population consisted of 369,362 individuals with an available BMI. The mean age was 8.8 years, and 49.5% were female.