Obesity-Linked Diabetes in Children Resists Treatment

Obesity and the form of diabetes linked to it are taking an even worse toll on America’s youths than medical experts had realized. As obesity rates in children have climbed, so has the incidence of Type 2 diabetes, and a new study adds another worry: the disease progresses more rapidly in children than in adults and is harder to treat.

“It’s frightening how severe this metabolic disease is in children,” said Dr. David M. Nathan, an author of the study and director of the diabetes center at Massachusetts General Hospital. “It’s really got a hold on them, and it’s hard to turn around.”

Before the 1990s, this form of diabetes was hardly ever seen in children. It is still uncommon, but experts say any increase in such a serious disease is troubling. There were about 3,600 new cases a year from 2002 to 2005, the latest years for which data is available.

The research is the first large study of Type 2 diabetes in children, “because this didn’t used to exist,” said Dr. Robin Goland, a member of the research team and co-director of the Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center at Columbia University Medical Center in New York. She added, “These are people who are struggling with something that shouldn’t happen in kids who are this young.”

Why the disease is so hard to control in children and teenagers is not known...

I’m sooooo, frukkin’ cynical, but this smells of the ‘Fat Nazis’...particularly at the New York Slimes. I would LOVE to ask them if they’d be willing to go after ‘Lil’ Kim’ of North Korea. He seems to be doing quite well in the ‘fatty-fatso’ department IMHO. But, I guess, Commie dictators don’t count.....as long as the populace is skinny and starving, amirite?

Maybe the solution is to grow your own food source.

In most people,at least,weight gain and weight loss isn't rocket science.To lose weight,reasonable amounts of reasonable foods (lean chicken rather than fried chicken,for example) along with reasonable amounts of exercise almost always does the trick.It might be more complicated in the situation mentioned in this article...in medicine there's an exception to most "rules".

This is a strange one...never saw this when I was in active pediatric practice (as they noted in the NEJM article, this was unknown before 1990). There were always obese kids, but not with T2DM.

FWIW, I would bet that it will be found to be something in the mom's environment when they were pregnant with these kids...something reset some metabolic switches in these individuals. Metformin is THE foundational drug for adults with T2DM, and it is terrific. Why it would only work in half these kids is really unexpected.

When this is figured out, it will offer several teachable moments. Thanks for posting.

"Maybe the solution is for these kids to lose weight."

Hey! And the way to do that might be for the kids to get some exercise and not to eat too much! (We might be awarded a Nobel Prize for this brilliant idea! Just like Moochelle's husband!)

I can’t believe they are still having trouble with this. Cut out the carbs. Done. Cured.

We all ate crap (sugar/carbs) as kids in the 60's and virtually no one was fat. It's called "lack of exercise". Video game and cellphone obsession has replaced physical activity.

I do wonder about this. When I go to my kid's school there are so many fat kids. When I was a child we had 4-5 really fat kids in the whole school. Now there are at least 5 (serious health issue) obese kids in every class.

I know it is a combination of diet and lack of exercise, but I wonder what putting kids on a diet would have on their vertical growth.

Two of my children are in a really low intensity soccer league and there are some of the kids on that team that I am guessing have never run before. They are so out of tune with their bodies that they can't even mimic the simplest of stretches. One girl is so overweight that she starts crying during the warmup.

I recently took off twenty+ pounds with a paleo type diet. I felt weird the first couple days, but then as my body I am really enjoying the types of food I am eating. I would still like to lose another 15 pounds, but I am seeing body weights I haven't seen in a long time. I think I can do it in another couple months. I am definitely not going back to the carb intake I used to have.

You are right to be leery of the food Nazis, but there is a real problem out there as well. Dangerous streets and the huge virtual world.

So many kids are sedentary lumps compared to what we enjoyed in our day. Hazardous, even predatory streets incline us to keep them inside. The menu of computer and other electronic past times tends to turn them into couch potatoes.

It requires an effort to keep them active and fit, when in the past it required effort to get them back inside the house. (Heh. Remembering several ‘chastisements’ I got for returning after sunset . . .)

Maybe additives in the food are causing both weight gain in excess of what the calories should cause and the treatment resistance.

Standards in scientific studies of this type are far below what they were in the fifties. Hell, they’re far below that of the quacks who developed phrenology in the nineteenth century.

Just absorb the attitude they want you to have, and accord government the authority to dictate your food.

I think we need to be looking at foods and going after the manufacturers. I believe we’re seeing so much obesity because of HFCS and MSG. I and my friends ate a ton of crap in high school and were couch potatoes. None of us were fat. I had one obese peer in my graduating class. My teen-ager eats a fair amount of junk, but it’s highly screened by me for plain sugar and no MSG. She’s a complete nerd, couch potato and skinny as a rail. We have scientists studying obesity using “MSG-mice.” That might be a bit of a “buy a clue, people.”

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