Diabetes has always been considered hereditary. But some new detective work suggests that drugs, particularly antibiotics, could be behind the surge in cases among children.
With virtually no solid scientific evidence, diabetes has always been considered hereditary. While researching her doctorate in chemistry, Lisa Landymore-Lim decided to study groups of diabetic patients. Her surprising findings showing a possible link between early onset diabetes and high exposure to prescription drugs in utero and early childhood provide early evidence that diabetes could be caused by prescription drugs.
The results of epidemiological studies show tremendous variation in the incidence of diabetes in children internationally. In Hokkaido, Japan, about two of every 100,000 children have diabetes, compared with approximately 30/100,000 in Finland. In the US and Western Europe, the current incidence rate for diabetes is second only to asthma among severe chronic diseases of childhood, with considerable geographical variation. In terms of total numbers, in the UK some 1600 children under the age of 15 years were diagnosed during 1988, whilst it is estimated that in the US, some 22,000 children under the age of 15 years developed diabetes during the three years 1978-1980.
Another factor which points towards environmental agents as the cause is that Japanese children in the US have four times the risk of becoming diabetic as do children in Japan. Jewish and French children in Canada are two to three times more likely to suffer from diabetes than children of the same origin living in their native country.
When I began studying diabetic children attending children's hospitals in the south of England and in Kent, I was surprised to discover that many children had been diagnosed as diabetic before the age of 10.
This led me to amalgamate all data obtained for diabetics diagnosed before 23 years of age, and to compare the age at which they were diagnosed with the year of onset. What I discovered was a decline in the average age at onset with each successive decade. In the Sixties, the average age of the onset of diabetes was up to 12; in the Eighties, this had dropped to up to the age of four.
This decline in incidence up to the age of four years suggests that there may have been an agent responsible for causing diabetes, to which children were subjected either in utero or around the time of birth.
In my interviews with some 170 mothers of diabetic children during the pilot study I observed
Many children had suffered from recurring tonsillitis, asthma, prolonged eczema or recurrent
Some mothers had taken certain drugs to prevent miscarriage or morning sickness, or had taken
antibiotics to treat infections during pregnancy.
Some children had always been sickly when compared to other children in the same family, and others had apparently been perfectly healthy before they were diagnosed.
Several mothers felt that their child had shown signs of sub clinical diabetes for two to four years before diagnosis, as they had been very thirsty children, tired easily, experienced "funny" spells, showed a disinclination to eat, or failed to gain weight.
When asked about significant events during labour, a small number of mothers reported having been induced or administered epidurals. It was observed that in general, children whose mothers had taken drugs during pregnancy or labour (other than the painkiller pethidine) generally became diabetic at a lower average age, and that the greater the degree of chemical exposure during pregnancy, labour or soon after birth either directly or via breast milk, the lower the age at onset. When mothers of the 20 children who had been diagnosed as diabetic before three years were then specifically asked whether they had been administered drugs during labour, half had been induced, been given epidurals or both.