
It’s easy to blame the childhood obesity epidemic for growing cases of type 2 diabetes, but a new study finds nearly one-quarter of all diagnoses are not related to obesity. “The finding was somewhat surprising,” said Dr. Constantine Samaan, an associate professor in the department of pediatrics at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. “The findings highlighted to us that there is significant heterogeneity [diversity] in type 2 diabetes risk in children. We clearly do not understand all the factors that drive its occurrence.” The researchers set out to study the issue because it wasn’t clear if obesity was universal in these patients, Samaan said. Screening has been driven by body-mass measures, so the investigators also wanted to know whether there was a subgroup of kids whose type 2 diabetes did not involve obesity. “We had considered several possible explanations and tested for them in the study. We had thought maybe children had lost weight due to the late diagnosis of diabetes or that they may have other forms of diabetes such as genetic forms,” Samaan said. “These two possibilities did not pan out in the analysis, so we do not yet know why some children develop type 2 diabetes when they are not overweight.” Researchers have hypothesized that there are likely children who do not produce enough insulin or are resistant to insulin, even at… read on > read on >