Children, adults more likely to develop type 1 diabetes if father has disease vs. mother
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
Key takeaways:
- Adults are 1.64 times more likely to develop type 1 diabetes if their father has type 1 diabetes rather than their mother.
- The odds for diabetes are similar if the parent is diagnosed after a child is born.
Both children and adults are more likely to be diagnosed with type 1 diabetes if they have a father with type 1 diabetes vs. a mother with the condition, according to a speaker.
In an analysis of 11,475 people with type 1 diabetes from five study cohorts presented at the European Association for the Study of Diabetes annual meeting, people diagnosed with type 1 diabetes were 1.8 times more likely to have a father with type 1 diabetes than a mother. The association was the same regardless of whether individuals with type 1 diabetes were diagnosed as children or adults, though a protective effect was only seen if the mother was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes before giving birth to the child.
“Your mother having type 1 diabetes is still relatively protecting you all the way through adulthood, as best as we can measure,” Richard Oram, MD, PhD, associate professor and the Diabetes UK Harry Keen Fellow in the Institute of Biomedical and Clinical Science and NIHR Exeter Clinical Research Facility at University of Exeter in the U.K., said during a presentation. “It’s really interesting and probably the take-home message.”
Researchers obtained data from participants in the Bart’s Oxford study of type 1 diabetes, the Better Diabetes Diagnosis study, the Type 1 Diabetes Genetics Consortium, the TrialNet Pathway to Prevention study and StartRight study. Individuals with type 1 diabetes who had complete family history available were included in the analysis.
In a random-effects model, people with type 1 diabetes were more likely to have a father with type 1 diabetes than a mother (OR = 1.8; 95% CI, 1.57-2.07). Significantly increased odds of having a father with type 1 diabetes were seen in all five individual cohorts.
When stratified by age, both children aged 18 years and younger (OR = 1.81; 95% CI, 1.56-2.1; P < .0001) and adults older than 18 years (OR = 1.64; 95% CI, 1.14-2.37; P = .007) were more likely to have a father with type 1 diabetes than a mother with type 1 diabetes.
When the parent was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes before the birth of offspring, individuals were more likely to have a father with type 1 diabetes than a mother with the condition (OR = 1.97; 95% CI, 1.44-2.71). There was no significant difference in the odds of having a father vs. a mother with type 1 diabetes if the parent was diagnosed after a child’s birth (OR = 1.03; 95% CI, 0.73-1.46).
“In utero exposure to maternal type 1 diabetes and its consequences appear critical to the best that we can see when looking at maternal age of diagnosis,” Oram said.
Age of type 1 diabetes onset did not differ between people who had a father with type 1 diabetes and those with a mother with type 1 diabetes. No difference in risk for genetic susceptibility for type 1 diabetes was observed between those with a father with type 1 diabetes and people with a mother with the disease.
Oram said the study found evidence of maternal protection against type 1 diabetes into adulthood, but more research is needed to explore the mechanisms behind the association.
“Understanding the mechanisms by which your mother protects you may lead to opportunities to develop therapeutic measures to intervene and reduce overall risk for type 1 diabetes,” Oram said.
Collapse
Allen LA, et al. OP 32. Presented at: European Association for the Study of Diabetes Annual Meeting; Sept. 9-13, 2024; Madrid.
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts