Examining Real-World Rates of Pediatric Diabetes, with Alaina Vidmar, MD

With the increasing rates of adult type 2 diabetes and its burden on patients and health systems receiving so much attention in recent years, many feel the epidemic of type 2 diabetes among pediatric patients in the US has not garnered the attention it deserves.

In a new study, which was presented at the American Diabetes Association (ADA) 82nd Scientific Sessions, investigators provide insight into trends in pediatric type 2 diabetes diagnoses using real-world data and ICD-9 codes from more than 50 practices and 80 million patients who received care in the US from 2018-2021.

After the release of data from the SEARCH for Diabetes in Youth Study, Alaina Vidmar, MD, a pediatric endocrinologist at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, and colleagues sought to examine the epidemiology of pediatric type 2 diabetes in a real-world setting. With this in mind, investigators designed their study to assess the rate of youth-onset type 2 diabetes using data from the TrinetX Research Network, which aggregated data from 58 institutions with 86,487,854 total patients.

Narrowing their search to patients less than 2 2years of age, investigators used ICD-10 codes to identify patients with at least 1 incidence of an E11 ICD-10 code for T2D associated with an ambulatory, emergency room, or inpatient encounter for each calendar year beginning in 2016 and ending in 2021. Of note, patients with other ICD-10 codes, including E08, E09, E10, or E13 were excluded to eliminate the possibility of including other forms of diabetes.

Upon analysis, results indicated the mean annual percentage change in prevalence per center rose by 9.1% from 2016 to 2019, with a constant increase in median BMI percentile during this same time period. Results also suggested the percentage of black youth diagnosed with type 2 diabetes rose from 30 to 33% during the study period (P <.0001), but the rusty among Hispanic youth remained unchanged at 25% (P=.73). When assessing trends according to patient sex, results suggested the rate of type 2 diabetes diagnoses among male youths also increased (P <.0001).

For more on the results of this study and how she interprets the data in her role as a practicing pediatric endocrinologist, Endocrinology Network sat down with Vidmar at ADA 2022 and that conversation is the subject of the video found below.

This study, “Pediatric Type 2 Diabetes Prevalence from Real-World Data in the United States,” was presented at ADA 2022.