Young type 2 diabetics: sick in fast motion?

Christiane Fux studied journalism and psychology in Hamburg. The experienced medical editor has been writing magazine articles, news and factual texts on all conceivable health topics since 2001. In addition to her work for, Christiane Fux is also active in prose. Her first crime novel was published in 2012, and she also writes, designs and publishes her own crime plays.

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Adolescents who develop type 2 diabetes often develop consequential damage - within a few years. For which groups is the risk particularly high?

Type 2 diabetes used to be referred to as old-age diabetes because it almost exclusively appeared in the second half of life. However, for some years now, young people have also increasingly developed this form of diabetes. Their number has increased fivefold in the past ten years. The particular problem: the longer the disease lasts, the more damage it can cause in the body.

The high blood sugar damages nerves, among other things, and calcifies the blood vessels. This results in diseases such as high blood pressure, kidney damage, damage to the eye retina up to blindness and many other problems. Usually these consequences only appear after many years of illness.

On insulin at 20

The TODAY Study Group, of which 13 clinical centers in the US belong, looked at how type 2 diabetes develops in young people. To this end, the scientists followed 500 sick teenagers over a period of an average of 13 years.

After the first study from 2004 to 2011, the young diabetics received the sugar-lowering drug metformin and / or insulin to reduce blood sugar and were included in a follow-up study that ran from 2011 to 2020.

After 13 years: 60 percent have complications

In the end, the participants were in their mid-twenties. Despite the drug treatment already suffered

• 68 percent of them have high blood pressure,
• and 52 percent had elevated blood lipid levels.

The researchers were particularly surprised that 60 percent of the participants had already developed a direct complication of the disease. Almost 30 percent even had two or more secondary diseases:

• 55 percent of the participants suffered from diabetic kidney disease.
• Around 32 percent were affected by nerve damage.
• 51 percent had developed retinal diseases, some of them at an advanced stage.

It is possible that the destructive processes take place much faster in young diabetics than in older ones.

What works differently in Europe - and what exactly

The results cannot be transferred one-to-one to European conditions. Because the decisive factor in diabetes is how well you can get your blood sugar levels under control.

On the one hand, it depends on the medical care provided. If diabetics - whether young or old - are well looked after by their doctor and medically well adjusted, consequential damage can be avoided or at least delayed.

On the other hand - and even more crucial - with type 2 diabetes, however, is personal responsibility: through diet changes, exercise and, above all, weight loss, diabetes can not only be improved, but in many patients even cured. This is not possible with medication.

The earlier in the history of the disease, lifestyle changes are made, the greater the likelihood that they will help defeat the disease. But for this young people need support from the surrounding area.

High risk for young people from socially disadvantaged families

How big this is also depends on your social background. Young participants in the study who belonged to a minority (Hispanics, blacks) - and these in turn are socio-economically worse off than whites in the United States - developed noticeably more often.

Genetic factors could of course also play a role. Above all, however, socio-economically disadvantaged people and people with a migration background suffer particularly often from overweight and obesity. This is the case in the USA - but also here in Europe.

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