The National Institutes of Health followed nearly 700 children diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, offering them a full service care plan that included medications, counseling, health and lifestyle changes and more.
The results, which will be published in the New England Journal of Medicine on April 29, show a disproportionate number of kids developing risks for adult diseases such as cardiovascular disease and kidney disease.
Locally, the UT-Health Science Center at San Antonio, in partnership with the University Health System and Texas Diabetes Institute-Children's Center enrolled dozens of San Antonio children in the study.
The Medical Director of the Institute, Dr. Jane Lynch, said, "It's a different disease from what their parents have. Most of them have parents with the same disease who had a later onset, but are not showing the same signs of rapid risk that these kids are."
Specifically, she points to 34 percent of the children studied showing signs of hypertension, and that was even while the kids were on two to three drugs to keep them healthy.
Another 17 percent had signs of kidney disease. Perhaps the most ominous finding showed a full one third of the children under the age of 20 with high lipid levels, showing they were already at risk for cardiovascular disease.
The other significant finding is that a combination of two diabetes drugs, metformin and rosiglitazone, was more effective in treating children with Type 2 than metformin alone.
In fact, the study confirmed that metformin is not as effective in children as it is in adults, and had a much higher failure rate than in other groups.
Together, the finding sound an alarm to doctors who are seeing more childhood obesity, the precursor to Type 2 in children.
Dr. Daniel Hale, a pediatric endocrinologist at the UT-Health Science Center says that given the rapidly advancing complications looming in these children, doctors need to be more aggressive with drug therapies.
He also says it's time to stop the growth of childhood obesity and diabetes before it starts. "We all need to get up and move. We need to turn off the tv and walk. We need to eat our fruits and vegetables… and not drink sugar soda," he warns.
Type 2 diabetes in adults and children is closely linked to being overweight, inactive and having a history of diabetes.