Childhood obesity tied to increased risk of type 1 diabetes, study suggests

UK: A recent study in the journal Nature Communications has found that childhood body size has a causal influence on the type 1 diabetes (T1D) risk. Its influence on other immune-associated diseases is likely due to the long-term effect of remaining overweight for many years over the life course.

"We present evidence indicating that body size in childhood increases the T1D risk based on the age-at-diagnosis of the participants analyzed in this study (mean age = 16.57 years)," the authors wrote in their study. "Our findings support results from previous observational studies suggesting that the increasing prevalence of childhood obesity is a causal factor in the rising numbers of T1D diagnoses. 

The increasing prevalence of childhood obesity has been postulated as the reason for the increasing rate of individuals diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. Tom G. Richardson, Novo Nordisk Research Centre Oxford, Old Road Campus, Oxford, United Kingdom, and colleagues used Mendelian randomization (MR) to provide evidence that childhood body size has an effect on T1D risk (OR = 2.05 per change in body size category), which remains after accounting for body size at birth and during adulthood using multivariable MR (OR = 2.32).