Diabetes

Pediatric Diabetes

Paediatric diabetes is a condition in children which deals with the endocrine glands disorder, such as variations of physical growth and sexual development in childhood, diabetes and many more. Paediatric Type 1 diabetes is a chronic illness characterized by the body’s inability to produce insulin due to autoimmune destruction of the beta cells in the pancreas. Most paediatric patients with diabetes have type 1 and a lifetime dependence on exogenous insulin. It has been estimated that 20 to 25% of children newly diagnosed with type 1 diabetes are obese.  Children with type 2 diabetes are at a higher risk of cardiovascular disease and micro vascular complications. Diabetes affects about 125,000 youth in USA younger than 19 years. Each year, approximately 13,000 children are diagnosed with diabetes. Until recently, children who diagnosed with diabetes almost exclusively had type 1 diabetes. However, as the prevalence of childhood obesity has tripled in the past 30 years, there has been an accompanying increase in the prevalence of metabolic syndrome, pre-diabetes and type 2 diabetes among children.