Rise in Child Chronic Illness Could Swamp Health Care

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Childhood diabetes is one of the prime results of rising obesity rates, which in turn result from more sedentary behaviors and poor diets.

"Children's environments have really changed a lot in the last 30 to 40 years," said Perrin. "By that, we mean a big change in their diets -- much more fast-food, high-calorie foods -- and major changes in their use of electronic media, especially television. They are spending much more time in the home watching television and eating high-calorie foods while they do so."

However, new research finds that the rise in childhood diabetes is still largely attributed to an increase in type 1 disease -- usually thought of as an inherited illness -- rather than an increase in obesity-linked type 2 disease, the form that typically strikes obese adults.

Experts aren't sure why type 1 diabetes numbers might be rising. Some experts believe that obesity might help spur certain immune-cell changes that are seen in type 1 disease, changes that eventually lead to the destruction of insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. Or, as Dr. Rebecca Lipton of the University of Chicago noted in an editorial, many of these type 1 cases may be type 2 cases misdiagnosed by physicians.

Diabetes does seem to be affecting different groups of American children in different ways, however.

"We have seen an increase in type 1 diabetes over a 27-year period of about 60 percent. This translates into 2.7 percent higher annual rates for non-Hispanic white children and about 1.6 percent higher annual rates for Hispanics," said Dr. Dana Dabelea, of the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, and lead author of the country-wide SEARCH for Diabetes in Youth study group.

"Based on these data, we estimate that 15,000 youth are diagnosed annually with type 1 diabetes in the United States," she said.

As for type 2 diabetes, Dabelea said that form of the disease "accounts for 1 to 2 percent of cases in Caucasian children [in Europe], whereas here in the United States, this figure is 15 percent. That figure speaks for itself... It's a deleterious consequence of obesity in this country."