FRIDAY, Feb. 7, 2020 (HealthDay News) — A public health screening for islet autoantibodies demonstrated prevalence of 0.31 percent among children aged 2 to 5 years, according to a study published in the Jan. 28 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Anette-Gabriele Ziegler, M.D., from the German Research Center for Environmental Health in Munich-Neuherberg, and colleagues examined the prevalence of presymptomatic type 1 diabetes in children participating in a public health screening program for islet autoantibodies in Bavaria, Germany. Families of children with multiple islet autoantibodies (presymptomatic type 1 diabetes) were invited to participate in a metabolic staging and educational program and were followed for progression to clinical diabetes.
The researchers found that 0.31 percent (280) of 90,632 children screened had presymptomatic type 1 diabetes, including 0.22, 0.02, and 0.03 percent with stage 1, stage 2, and stage 3, respectively. Another 36 children developed stage 3 type 1 diabetes after a median follow-up of 2.4 years. For stage 3 type 1 diabetes, the three-year cumulative risk was 24.9 percent in the 280 children with presymptomatic type 1 diabetes (annualized rate, 9.0 percent). Diabetic ketoacidosis was identified in two children.
“A crucial finding of the study is that there is a 9 percent annualized risk for disease progression in children with presymptomatic disease,” Ziegler said in a statement. “Its implication is that multiple antibodies can be used to identify children with presymptomatic type 1 diabetes who could benefit from intervention in any childhood population regardless of genetic risk.”
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