“Pre-diabetes,” diabetes rising among U.S. teens

Reuters.com: By Amy Norton NEW YORK | Mon May 21, 2012 5:49pm EDT.

(Reuters Health) – The percentage of U.S. teenagers with “pre-diabetes” or full-blown type 2 diabetes has more than doubled in recent years — though obesity and other heart risk factors have held steady, government researchers reported Monday.

The good news, the researchers say, is that teen obesity rates leveled off between 1999 and 2008 — hovering between 18 percent and 20 percent over the years.

Rates of high blood pressure and high LDL cholesterol (the “bad” kind) also remained steady.

But the picture was different with so-called pre-diabetes and with type 2 diabetes. Those conditions were seen in nine percent of teens in 1999-2000, but that figure rose to 23 percent in 2007-2008, the researchers report in the journal Pediatrics.

“That was unexpected, especially since obesity has been leveling off,” said lead researcher Ashleigh May, of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Read More