MONDAY, March 4, 2002 (HealthDayNews) -- Children with Type I diabetes are slightly taller than their peers who don't have it, says a new finding that could shed light on what leads to the development of the disease.
However, the researchers behind the report stress the height differences are subtle, and parents of tall children shouldn't worry. The findings appear in the March issue of the journal Pediatrics.
Roughly 16 million Americans have diabetes, with Type I, or insulin-dependent, diabetes making up about between 5 percent and 10 percent of all cases. This form of the disease most often strikes during childhood, when the body loses its ability to produce insulin, the hormone that breaks down sugar.
Lead investigator Dr. John H. DiLiberti, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Illinois in Peoria, says studies of children's height at the time of their diabetes diagnoses date back to the 1920s, but the results have been inconsistent.
Aiming to address that problem, the researchers collected data on the heights of 451 boys and girls with Type I diabetes, along with their parents' heights, as well as the child's age at the time they started using insulin. This was compared to similar data from the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III) of 10,522 children, representing the general population of American kids.
"Starting at around 3 years of age, children with diabetes were statistically taller than other children," he says. For example, 3-year-old boys with diabetes were on average .4 inches taller, and by the age of 11, they were roughly .54 inches taller.
Although the difference might not seem overwhelming on an individual basis, DiLiberti says, in a study of this size the effects are significant.
However, when the researchers statistically adjusted for the height of the parents of the children with diabetes, the height difference between the two groups of children disappeared.
"What that tells us is that these children were biologically and genetically taller than their peers, which increased their risk for diabetes -- not the other way around," DiLiberti says. "The height comes first, and then the diabetes."
If the tendency towards increased height is associated with Type I diabetes, says DiLiberti, there are several potential explanations.
"One is that larger individuals may have increases in so-called autoimmune diseases," he says. "[Or,] if you're bigger, maybe your pancreas is stressed and it can't keep up. Maybe bigger children are more likely to reach a breaking point -- the straw that broke the camel's back."
Dr. Mark A. Sperling, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, says the big problem is the "epidemic of obesity" in the Western world.
"Generally, obese children are tall children," says Sperling. "They may mature earlier, and not end up being taller than average." What makes them grow, he says, is that as they grow, they develop resistance to insulin, and to compensate, their bodies make more insulin.
At the same time, children developing Type I diabetes are losing insulin-producing cells.
"If you have obesity with insulin resistance, and you're making up for the resistance by making more insulin as your pancreas is being 'Pac-manned' away, [you'll develop diabetes sooner,]" says Sperling.
However, DiLiberti says parents shouldn't be concerned if their children are slightly taller than their peers. "Fortunately, [Type I ] diabetes is a fairly uncommon disease," he says. "We shouldn't go screening tall kids for diabetes."
What To Do
The National Institute of Diabetes & Digestive & Kidney Disorders provides this overview of diabetes.
For specific information on Type I diabetes, visit the American Diabetes Association or the Canadian Diabetes Association.
