Warning signs for diabetes in children as young as eight

Early signs of adult type 2 diabetes are visible in children as young as eight years old, decades before it is normally diagnosed.

Adult type 2 diabetes signs may be visible in children as young as eight.

Researchers from the University of Bristol analysed genetic information known to increase the chances of having the life-long condition and measures of metabolism in thousands of UK children.

They found that being more susceptible to type 2 diabetes affected a young person’s levels of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, amino acids and a chronic inflammatory trait measured in the blood.

Dr Joshua Bell, from the MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit at the University of Bristol, said: “It’s remarkable that we can see signs of adult diabetes in the blood from such a young age.

“This is about 50 years before it’s commonly diagnosed.”

The researchers tracked more than 4,500 participants of a birth cohort established in Bristol in the early 1990s.

They measured 229 metabolic traits on the healthy participants four times at ages eight, 15, 18 and 25, to see how early diabetes susceptibility is visible.

They found that levels of HDL cholesterol were reduced at age eight, while inflammatory glycoprotein acetyls and amino acids were elevated by the mid to late teens.

Dr Bell, who co-led the research, said: “Knowing what early features of type 2 diabetes look like could help us to intervene much earlier to halt progression to full blown diabetes and its complications.”

The study is being presented at this year’s European Association for the Study of Diabetes annual meeting in Barcelona.

Meanwhile, a separate study being presented at the same event suggests that people in certain professions have an increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

Professional drivers, manufacturing workers, and cleaners have a threefold increased risk compared with lecturers and physiotherapists, according to Swedish researchers.

They found that the differences are apparently linked to lifestyle risk factors, meaning that if employees in certain lines of work could be encouraged to lose weight and become more active, it may improve their health.

The study, led by Dr Sofia Carlsson from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, analysed a Swedish population register.

Dr Carlsson said: “Indiv­iduals in high-risk occu­pations were more likely to be overweight, smoke and have lower physical fitness than those in low-risk occupations.”