Study Shows That Diabetes in Young People Under the Age of 20 Continues to Rise

Recent findings from the SEARCH for Diabetes in Youth study (SEARCH) show that the number of young people being diagnosed with diabetes in the United States is rising, with the biggest increases observed among racial and ethnic minority youth. These findings emphasize the importance of identifying ways to prevent diabetes onset in youth, as increasing incidence of type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes in young people will result in a growing population of young adults at risk for early complications of diabetes, such as diabetic kidney disease, eye disease, nerve disease, and high blood pressure.

SEARCH—supported by NIDDK, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Special Statutory Funding Program for Type 1 Diabetes Research—is a multi-center study that launched in 2000 with the goal to learn more about diabetes and its complications in children and young adults in the United States. Previous findings from SEARCH reported an alarming increase in the incidence of type 1 and type 2 diabetes in children and young people from 2002 to 2015. These recent data extend the previous analyses for an additional 3 years to 2018. The study found that, for U.S. children and young adults, new diagnoses of type 1 diabetes increased by approximately 2 percent every year, while new cases of type 2 diabetes increased by more than 5 percent every year. The rates of increase in both type 1 and type 2 diabetes were higher among American Indian, Asian or Pacific Islander, Hispanic, and non-Hispanic Black populations, compared to the non-Hispanic White population. The study also found a peak in type 1 diabetes diagnoses at 10 years of age and in type 2 diabetes at 16 years of age, providing critical information about a time window when interventions to reduce the diabetes risk in youth might be most effective.

The rise in youth-onset type 2 diabetes could be a consequence of the increasing rates of obesity in youth—a known risk factor for type 2 diabetes—and improved diagnosis and screening. Further research is needed to identify more effective ways to prevent and/or delay onset of diabetes in youth and to address the higher burden of diabetes in children and young people from racial and ethnic minority groups.