Obese children face four times greater risk of Type-2 diabetes in adulthood

New Delhi: A new study says that kids facing obesity are at four times the risk of developing Type-2 diabetes in later stage of life as compared to the children with a normal body mass index.

For the study, published in the Journal of the Endocrine Society, the researchers examined BMI measurements, diabetes diagnosis records, and other data for 369,362 children between the ages of 2 and 15.

They found that 654 children and teenagers were diagnosed with Type-2 diabetes between 1994 and 2013.

Children with higher BMI were found to have far greater risk of developing Type-2 diabetes than those with normal weight.

"A child with obesity faces a four-fold greater risk of being diagnosed with diabetes by the age of 25, than their counterpart who is of normal weight," said lead author of the study Ali Abbasi from King`s College London.

In addition, the researchers found that the rate of children developing Type-2 diabetes increased from an average of six new cases per 100,000 children each year between 1994 and 1998, to an average of 33 new cases per 100,000 children each year, between 2009 and 2013.

(With IANS inputs)