Diabetes

Each year over 13,000 young people are diagnosed with diabetes, making it one of the most common chronic diseases of childhood in the United States. It affects more than 176,500 children. His-torically, youth between 8 and 19 years of age have predominantly had type 1 diabe-tes, but now type 2 diabetes is emerging as an important disease in this group. The prevalence of childhood type 2 diabetes has increased 33 % in the past 15 years, and type 2 diabetes may account for 8% to 45 % of new cases in youth (Centers fo