New-onset type 1 diabetes cases among children decline in 2022 after sharp increase
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Key takeaways:
- Children aged 6 to 14 years in Scotland had a sharp increase in new-onset type 1 diabetes cases in 2021.
- Incidence rates of type 1 diabetes among children fell below Scotland’s 8-year average in 2022.
Rates of new-onset type 1 diabetes among children fell back to pre-pandemic levels in 2022 after sharply increasing in 2021, according to a population-wide analysis of data from Scotland published in Diabetes Care.
“The sharp increase in type 1 diabetes incidence seen in 2021 was restricted to children aged 6 to 14 years and did not persist into 2022,” Helen M. Colhoun, MD, FRCP, professor and AXA chair in medical informatics and life course epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and colleagues wrote. “This finding should provide substantial reassurance to parents and service providers.”
Researchers collected data on incident type 1 diabetes cases from 2015 to 2022 from the Scottish Care Information – Diabetes registry. Diagnoses were broken down into three age groups: 0 to 5 years, 6 to 14 years and 15 to 34 years. Incidence of diabetic ketoacidosis at hospital admission was obtained from the Scottish Morbidity Records 01 database.
Of the three age groups, children aged 6 to 14 years had the highest incidence of new-onset type 1 diabetes from 2015 to 2022. Incidence of type 1 diabetes among children aged 6 to 14 years peaked in 2021 at a level about 20% higher than the 8-year average from 2015 to 2022. However, the incidence rate among that age group declined to just below the 8-year average in 2022. No changes in type 1 diabetes incidence were observed for children aged 0 to 5 years during the study period. Adolescents and adults aged 15 to 34 years had a slow, nonsignificant increase in type 1 diabetes incidence during the study.
Among children aged 6 to 14 years, the percentage of type 1 diabetes diagnoses in boys increased from 45.8% in 2019 to 51.9% in 2020, 51.2% in 2021 and 52.4% in 2022. The proportion of children diagnosed with new-onset type 1 diabetes who had DKA on hospital admission was 31.2% in 2019, 31.4% in 2020 and 2021 and 34.1% in 2022.
“Continued monitoring of type 1 diabetes incidence remains paramount, and it will be of interest to see whether similar patterns are observed in other countries,” the researchers wrote.
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