Published ,
Reading 2 mins.
According to a new study on type 1 diabetes, this pathology could be triggered by severe obesity in adolescence. These findings were presented this year at the annual meeting of the American Diabetes Association in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA and published in the journal Diabetologia by a team of Israeli researchers.
Excessively high BMI in adolescence is linked to type 1 diabetes, which is an autoimmune disease and not just type 2 diabetes, which is caused by being overweight, according to a new study by Sheba researchers Medical Center in Israel.
Two types of diabetes
Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease, caused by the destruction of the beta cells of the islets of Langerhans of the pancreas, responsible for the secretion of insulin in the blood. In type 2 diabetes, it is excess weight, associated with a poor lifestyle (sedentary lifestyle or low physical activity) that tends to cause it.
In this work, the scientists sought to highlight the link between type 1 diabetes and increased BMI, knowing that in 50% of cases of type 1 diabetes, the disease started after the age of 18 years old.
A large-scale study
To reach their conclusions, Prof. Gilad Twig of the Sheba Medical Center in Israel and his colleagues included 1.46 million adolescents in the study, choosing all Israeli adolescents, aged 16 to 19, undergoing an evaluation. for compulsory military conscription between January 1996 and December 2016 (unless they had a history of abnormal blood sugar).
Weight and height were measured at the start of the study, and statistical modeling was used to calculate any excess risk of type 1 diabetes associated with overweight or obesity.
777 cases of type 1 diabetes
In total, the authors identified 777 cases of type 1 diabetes, whose average age at diagnosis was 25 years. BMI was associated with this disease onset.
Indeed, according to the researchers, obese adolescents had a double risk of developing type 1 diabetes, while overweight people had “a 54% increased risk of type 1 diabetes“. For the entire BMI range, the authors reported that “for every 5 kg/m2, the adjusted risk of developing type 1 diabetes increases by 35%”.
An inflammatory process involved?
For the authors, their results can be explained by the link between obesity and autoimmune diseases. According to them, the possible explanation would come from “elevated levels of adipokines and inflammatory cytokines” who, “associated with obesity would decrease self-tolerance by promoting pro-inflammatory processes that lead to diabetes”.
Consult a GP online
A public health issue
An opinion shared by Dr Gérald Kierzek, emergency physician and medical director of Doctissimo, who recalls that “obesity is a chronic inflammatory disease that disrupts the immune system“.
For the doctor,we must fight against obesity on the inflammatory side now, with appropriate treatments and diet, to stop the process“. A public health issue in the face of the galloping evolution of obesity affecting Western countries today.