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April 05, 2006 at 04:06 PM
Researchers at Express Scripts Inc. says they believe they are seeing the first concrete signs that obesity is increasing the percentage of U.S. children who have obesity-related diabetes.
The researchers at Express Scripts, St. Louis, a large pharmacy benefits manager, have analyzed Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes medication prescription patterns over a 4-year period for at least 3.7 million U.S. children ages 5 to 19 enrolled in commercial health plans.
Doctors believe that Type 1 diabetes, which destroys the ability of the body to produce insulin, is usually caused by genetic traits, infectious diseases and other factors that trick the body’s immune system into killing insulin-producing tissues.
Doctors believe that Type 2 diabetes, which reduces the ability of the body to handle insulin efficiently, may be caused by obesity and the kinds of diets that lead to obesity.
The Express Script researchers who conducted the newly released study did not try to correlate obesity data with diabetes prescription use, and changes in diabetes awareness and diabetes treatment philosophies may be partly responsible for changes in prescription patterns.
