AM730 (11/11/2021)(In Chinese)
Diabetes Association: An average of 7 children are diagnosed each month
View original article: Diabetes Association: An average of 7 children are diagnosed each month
About 700,000 people in Hong Kong suffer from diabetes, accounting for about 10% of the population, and the prevalence is getting younger. In 2016, the Children’s Diabetes Association obtained data from 12 pediatric departments of the Hospital Authority to establish the “Hong Kong Children’s Diabetes Register”, and found that an average of 7 children were diagnosed with the disease each month. The association pointed out that fatty liver may become a long-term complication of diabetic patients.
Diabetes is divided into type 1 and type 2. The association said that there are about 1.1 million people under the age of 20 suffering from type 1 diabetes caused by the immune system in the world. Symptoms include thirst, frequent urination, weight loss, etc. The report of “Child Diabetes Register” shows that the incidence of both types of diabetes in Hong Kong children has continued to rise in the past 20 years. Although type 1 diabetes is still the most common type of diabetes in Hong Kong children, the number of people suffering from type 2 diabetes has increased sharply, from 198 confirmed children from 1997 to 2007 to 391 from 2008 to 2017.
The chairman of the Children’s Diabetes Association, Cheng Fengliangqi (third from left in the picture), said that because the immune system attacks the cells in the pancreas that produce insulin, patients with type 1 diabetes need to inject insulin throughout their lives. The main cause of type 2 diabetes is the body’s resistance to insulin, which is closely related to factors such as genetics, bad eating habits, obesity and lack of exercise.
Pediatrician Dr. Zhang Bitao (second from left) said that the liver has not been considered an organ directly damaged by long-term diabetes, but there is evidence that diabetes and fatty liver have common metabolic disorders.
An institution recently used liver fibrosis scanning to study the incidence of fatty liver in patients with type 1 diabetes. Another pediatric specialist, Dr. Zhou Zhongwuanquan (second from right in the picture), said that the results showed that fatty liver has the potential to become a long-term complication of diabetic patients, and recommended that fatty liver be included in the complication screening plan for diabetic patients.