![\"News](\"https:\/\/media.healthday.com\/Images\/icimages\/SS36069.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n
WEDNESDAY, June 24, 2020 (HealthDay News)<\/p>\n
Kids as young as age 8 can show signs of being at increased risk for diabetes<\/a> in adulthood, a British study finds.<\/p>\n Researchers analyzed blood samples collected from more than 4,000 participants at ages 8, 16, 18 and 25, looking for patterns specific to early stages of type 2 diabetes<\/a> development.<\/p>\n “We knew that diabetes<\/a> doesn’t develop overnight. What we didn’t know is how early in life the first signs of disease activity become visible and what these early signs look like,” said study co-author Joshua Bell, an epidemiologist at the University of Bristol.<\/p>\n While diabetes<\/a> is most common in older age, signs that one is prone to it can be seen about 50 years before it’s typically diagnosed, the researchers said.<\/p>\n “Knowing what these early signs look like widens our window of opportunity to intervene much earlier and stop diabetes<\/a> before it becomes harmful,” Bell said in a university news release.<\/p>\n He and his colleagues found that in susceptible children, certain types of “good” HDL cholesterol<\/a> were lower at age 8 before other types of cholesterol<\/a>, including “bad” LDL, increased.<\/p>\n By ages 16 and 18, inflammation and amino acids were also elevated, the study showed. These differences widened over time.<\/p>\n “We’re talking about the effects of susceptibility rather than of clinical disease itself,” Bell said. “This does not mean that young people ‘already have adult diabetes<\/a>‘; these are subtle differences in the metabolism of young people who are more prone to developing it later in life.”<\/p>\n He said the findings help reveal how diabetes<\/a> unfolds and what features could be targeted to prevent it.<\/p>\n “This is important because we know that the harmful effects of blood glucose, such as on heart disease<\/a>, are not exclusive to people with diagnosed diabetes but extend to a smaller degree to much of the population,” Bell said.<\/p>\n The study was published June 19 in the journal Diabetes Care<\/i>.<\/p>\n — Robert Preidt<\/p>\n![\"MedicalNews\"](\"https:\/\/images.medicinenet.com\/images\/HealthDay\/healthday.png\")
Copyright \u00a9 2020 HealthDay. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/images.medicinenet.com\/images\/quiz\/type-2-diabetes\/type-2-diabetes-s1.jpg\"\/)