UK Edition
Hundreds of obese children and teenagers should be given weight loss surgery to reverse their diabetes, experts say.
Britain’s obesity crisis means almost 800 patients under the age of 18 are now receiving treatment for type two diabetes, with cases among children as young as six.
Type two diabetes normally occurs among overweight adults, often in middle age, after decades of weight gain. Nine in ten cases are fueled by excess weight.
But soaring obesity rates in under-18s have seen the number of young children with the condition more than double in five years.
Experts are now calling for young people to be offered operations like gastric bypasses and bands in a bid to prevent long-term damage.
Surgeon Andrew Beamish, an honorary senior lecturer at Swansea University, said children should be offered surgery soon after being diagnosed.
"We need to catch diabetes [in young people] early and we need to treat it with an operation," he told the virtual Diabetes UK Professional Conference last week.
"This is a much more aggressive disease that progresses much more rapidly than in adults. We need to make sure we shut the gates before the horse bolts."
There were 790 under-18s receiving treatment for type 2 diabetes from a paediatrician in England and Wales in 2018/19 - up from 340 in 2013/14, figures from the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) show.
Children as young as six have been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and the number of 13- and 14-year-olds with the condition jumped 39 per cent between 2017/18 and 2018/19.
Untreated or poorly managed diabetes can lead to serious health problems, including heart attacks, strokes, kidney failure, blindness and amputations.
But Dr Beamish said common treatments for type 2 diabetes, such as medications and insulin therapies, are not as effective at preventing damage from the condition in children as in adults.
Studies suggest these ‘first line’ treatments stopped working for one in five obese teenagers within a year, and for more than half within five years.
Weight-loss surgeries, such as gastric bands, can reverse diabetes for up to nine out of 10 patients who undergo it - but research suggests it works best when they have only had the condition for a short period of time.
One Swedish study found 90 per cent of diabetic adults who had weight-loss surgery within a year of being diagnosed were free from the condition two years later, compared to just 40 per cent who had the surgery four or more years after being diagnosed.