Research suggests that about 2.8 million adolescents in the U.S. may have impaired fasting glucose levels, a precursor to diabetes, and another 39,000 have overt type 2, or non-insulin-dependent, diabetes.

These estimates have “important implications for public health” because of the high rate of conversion from impaired fasting glucose to type 2 diabetes in adults and the increased risk of cardiovascular disease in individuals with type 2 diabetes, said study author Dr. Glen E. Duncan, from the University of Washington in Seattle.

The results, reported in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, are based on data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) for 1999 through 2002.

The study focused on 4,370 adolescents with self-reported diabetes and 1496 teens who denied having the disease, but had undergone fasting blood glucose testing. Self-reported diabetics who used insulin were classified as type 1 diabetics, while all others were assumed to have type 2 disease.

The overall prevalence of diabetes among teens in NHANES was 0.5 percent. Of these individuals, 71 percent had type 1 diabetes (insulin-dependent) and 29 percent had type 2 disease. Eleven percent of teens who reported no diabetes had impaired fasting glucose levels.

Extrapolating the current data to the entire US population suggests that roughly 39,000 teens have type 2 diabetes and more than 2.7 million have impaired fasting glucose levels.

Dr. Arlan L. Rosenbloom, from the Children’s Medical Services Center in Gainesville, Florida, is hopeful that “recognition of the public health time bomb” that is diabetes will lead to a pervasive societal effort to prevent obesity. Rosenbloom acknowledges in an editorial that this is “a daunting task of such magnitude that enormous community and governmental commitments will be required.”

SOURCE: Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine May 2006.