Diabetes begins at home

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Disadvantaged children are more likely than their better-heeled peers to develop diabetes in adulthood, according to a study by researchers at Portland State University School of Community Health in Oregon. This holds true even for those children who later rose from poverty into a higher socioeconomic bracket, according to the report.

The data were drawn from questionnaires administered to 5,913 adults participating in the Alameda County Study, a long-term, population-based investigation that started in 1965 and ran through 1999. Among the participants, 307 developed diabetes during that period, and of those, 65% had grown up in poor households. Those who were overweight were also more likely to have developed diabetes.

‘Type 2 diabetes can take 10 to 15 years to develop to the point where the individual is aware of signs and symptoms and seeks clinical care,’ says lead author Siobhan Maty in a news release. The size and duration of the study, ‘gives us enough cases to ensure statistically meaningful results,’ she adds.

The study appears in the August issue of the American Journal of Public Health.

--Janet Cromley