FRIDAY, Aug. 28, 2026 (HealthDay News) -- There was a 10-fold increase in youth-onset type 2 diabetes from 2002 to 2023, according to a study to be presented at the annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes, held from Sept. 28 to Oct. 2 in Milan.
Tessa Crume, M.S.P.H., Ph.D., from the Colorado School of Public Health in Aurora, and colleagues used data from the Colorado Diabetes Registry to examine long-term trends in youth-onset (younger than 20 years) type 1 and type 2 diabetes in Colorado between 2002 and 2023.
The researchers found that the incidence of type 1 diabetes increased from 25.07 per 100,000 in 2002 to 27.39 per 100,000 in 2023. Between 2002 and 2014, there was a stable trend of incident type 1 diabetes (annual percentage change [APC], 0.66 percent). From 2015 to 2023, there was an increasing trend (APC, 2.62 percent). From 2002 to 2023, the incidence of type 2 diabetes among youth aged 10 to 19 years increased from 2.37 per 100,000 to 22.30 per 100,000. From 2002 to 2013, the incidence of type 2 diabetes increased by 2.92 percent annually compared with 4.72 percent annually from 2014 to 2023.
"The danger is considerable, and it is why these trends matter so much," Crume said in a statement. "Type 2 diabetes in a young person is a more aggressive disease than the same diagnosis in a middle-aged adult. The insulin-producing cells of the pancreas decline faster, blood sugar is harder to control, and complications affecting the kidneys, eyes, nerves, and heart can appear within just a few years rather than decades."
