Children’s Diabetes
- Diabetes is a serious, chronic childhood condition. After asthma, diabetes is the most common chronic disease of childhood.
- Diabetes in children is very different from diabetes in adults, both in its severity and in how it is treated.
- Children’s access to CCS-approved diabetes care is critical to their ability to lead full, active lives free from complications.
What is children’s diabetes?
Diabetes is a chronic disease in which the body either does not make or does not properly use insulin, a hormone that is necessary to convert glucose and other food into energy.
Diabetes is reaching epidemic levels in children and youth across the United States and in California. Approximately 1 in every 500 children and adolescents in the United States has diabetes, and this rate is climbing steadily. Children and adolescents can have two types of diabetes: type 1 and type 2. Both types are serious, chronic conditions in children and can be life-threatening.
Type 1 diabetes occurs when the body’s immune system attacks the insulin-producing cells of the pancreas, which regulate blood glucose. Because the pancreas can no longer produce insulin, people with type 1 diabetes require daily injections of insulin for life.
Type 1 diabetes is the leading cause of diabetes in children, and incidence is increasing every year. Children with type 1 diabetes are at risk for long-term complications, including damage to the cardiovascular system, kidneys, eyes, nerves, blood vessels, gums, and teeth.
Until recently, type 2 diabetes was seen mostly among adults over 40 who were overweight. Now, as more children and adolescents in the United States become overweight and inactive, type 2 diabetes has increased by a factor of ten in the last decade.
In type 2 diabetes, the body becomes resistant to insulin, and needs more and more of it to control blood glucose. Over time, insulin production by the pancreas declines and diabetes develops. Thus, many with type 2 diabetes will eventually require insulin injections.