Study: Children and Adolescents with Metabolic Syndrome at Higher Risk of Type 2 Diabetes

Children and adolescents with the metabolic syndrome are at increased risk for developing Type 2 Diabetes and subclinical atherosclerosis in adulthood, according to study by Costan Magnussen (University of Turku, Finland) and team. However, the study also revealed that screening for high body mass index (BMI) alone in this age group is a simpler and equally accurate predictor of later cardiometabolic outcomes compared with the metabolic syndrome as a whole.

Study:

The researchers used data from the Bogalusa Heart Study and Cardiovascular Risk in Young Finns Study to assess whether the metabolic syndrome and its associated components in childhood and adolescence predict Type 2 Diabetes and high carotid intima-media thickness (IMT) in later life. In all 1781 children aged 9-18 years were recruited during 1984-1988. They were then followed up between 2001 and 2007 when aged 24-41 years.

Result:

Children who had the metabolic syndrome had a 2-3 times higher risk for developing Type 2 Diabetes or having increased carotid IMT (at or above 90th percentile for population) than those without the metabolic syndrome. However, they also stated that use of pediatric BMI alone to predict adult Type 2 Diabetes or high carotid IMT was the most significant component of the pediatric metabolic syndrome for predicting adult outcomes.

Comments from the researchers:

"Our findings have direct clinical relevance because they suggest that in the clinical setting, efforts to identify youth with heightened future risk of meaningful outcomes can be minimally achieved with the use of BMI only.”

"However, clinicians who use high BMI to identify youth at increased future risk need to keep in mind that a large proportion of contemporary youth will be classified as at risk and that our analyses are unable to discount that youth metabolic syndrome may be useful in identifying and possibly treating other cardiometabolic disorders."