Childhood Adiposity Ups Risk for Adult-Onset Diabetes

Childhood adiposity is a risk factor for four of five subtypes of
adult-onset diabetes, according to a study published in Diabetologia.
Yuxia Wei and colleagues performed a Mendelian randomization (MR)
analysis using data from European genomewide association studies of childhood adiposity
and adult-onset diabetes, including latent autoimmune diabetes in adults (LADA; which is
a proxy for severe autoimmune diabetes) and four subtypes of T2D: severe insulin-deficient
diabetes (SIDD), severe insulin-resistant diabetes (SIRD), mild obesity-related diabetes
(MOD), and mild age-related diabetes (MARD). Positive genetically predicted effects
for higher levels of childhood adiposity were observed with LADA, SIDD, SIRD, and
MOD (ORs [95% CI], 1.62 [1.05-2.52], 2.11 [1.18-3.80], 2.76 [1.60-4.75], and 7.30 [4.17-
12.78], respectively), but not for MARD (OR,1.06; 95% CI, 0.70-1.60). “Our analyses indicate
that childhood obesity is a risk factor for four of the five proposed novel subtypes of
adult-onset diabetes, regardless of whether they are classified as being primarily characterized by
auto-immunity, insulin deficiency, insulin resistance,or obesity,” the study authors wrote.