DOI: 10.2337/diacare.29.02.06.dc05-1037 © 2006 by the American Diabetes Association © 2006 by the American Diabetes Association, Inc.
Presence of Diabetes Risk Factors in a Large U.S. Eighth-Grade CohortThe STOPP-T2D Prevention Study Group*From the George Washington University Biostatistics Center, Rockville, Maryland Address correspondence and reprint requests to Kathryn Hirst, PhD, George Washington University Biostatistics Center, 6110 Executive Blvd., Suite 750, Rockville, MD 20852. E-mail: khirst{at}biostat.bsc.gwu.edu
OBJECTIVEThe study was conducted in 12 middle schools to determine the prevalence of diabetes, pre-diabetes, and diabetes risk factors in eighth-grade students who were predominantly minority and evaluate the feasibility of collecting physical and laboratory data in schools.
RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODSAnthropometric measurements and fasting and 2-h post-glucose load blood draws were obtained from
RESULTSMean recruitment rate was 50% per school, 49% had BMI
CONCLUSIONSThere was a high prevalence of risk factors for diabetes, including impaired fasting glucose (
Abbreviations: IFG, impaired fasting glucose IGT, impaired glucose tolerance NHANES, National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey STOPP-T2D, Studies to Treat Or Prevent Pediatric Type 2 Diabetes
The prevalence of childhood obesity has increased dramatically over the past 30 years. Among youth 1219 years of age, the percent with BMI >95th percentile for age and sex rose from 6% in the early 1970s to >16% in the 19992000 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) (1). This increase was even more pronounced among African-American and Hispanic youth. Concomitant with this rise, there has been a corresponding increase in the incidence of type 2 diabetes among American children. Before the 1990s, this condition was rare. By 1994, type 2 diabetic patients represented up to 16% of new cases of diabetes in children in urban areas (2), and by 1999, from 8 to 45% (3). Type 2 diabetes is more common in African-American, Mexican-American, and Native-American youth, during or after puberty (3). Although several clinical trials have assessed the efficacy of primary and secondary type 2 diabetes prevention programs for adults (4,5), there have been few similar efforts in children and youth. As a result, in 2002, the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases funded a multicenter collaborative group to conduct a primary prevention trial of type 2 diabetes in children and adolescents. The collaborative group, Studies to Treat Or Prevent Pediatric Type 2 Diabetes (STOPP-T2D), has been developing a school-based multi-component intervention trial that will be conducted in middle schools. In preparation for the trial, in the fall of 2003, a pilot study was conducted to determine the prevalence of diabetes, pre-diabetes, and diabetes risk factors in eighth-grade students who were predominantly minority, to explore the role of race and ethnicity, and to evaluate the feasibility of collecting physical and laboratory data in the school setting.
Four middle schools with at least 50% minority students were recruited by each participating center in Southern California (University of California at Irvine and the Keck School of Medicine at University of Southern California), Texas (Baylor College of Medicine), and North Carolina (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill). All eighth-grade students were invited to participate in a health screening. Students with diabetes (as reported by parent or guardian) were excluded. Informed consent from parents and assent from students were obtained. Students were given a $50 incentive for participation. Before recruitment, data were collected from all eighth-grade students for height, weight, age, ethnicity, and sex. This study was approved by the institutional review boards at each center.
Data collection
Race/ethnicity information was collected by student self-report. A parent or guardian completed a questionnaire about family and medical history. The child was considered to have a first-degree family history if the respondent indicated that the natural mother, the natural father, or any full sister or brother had diabetes. Students underwent two blood draws with the option of using local anesthetic cream. Students were questioned about fasting, and those who indicated they had consumed food or beverage were rescheduled and still received their incentive. Fasting blood was obtained to determine glucose, insulin, and HbA1c (A1C) levels. Students were then given oral glucose (glucose solution 1.75 g/kg, to a maximal dose of 75 g). Two hours post-glucose load, blood was obtained to determine glucose and insulin levels. A fasting glucose value Blood for glucose analysis was collected in 2-ml BD-vacutainers (Becton Dickinson, Franklin Lakes, NJ) containing Na-fluoride, while blood for insulin analysis was collected in 2-ml BD-vacutainers containing Na-heparin. Vacutainers were inverted immediately to ensure proper mixing, iced or refrigerated for 3060 min, and centrifuged at 1,300g for 15 min. Plasma was transferred into cryovials, frozen, and shipped on dry ice to Northwest Lipid Metabolism and Diabetes Research Laboratories, University of Washington, Seattle. Analyses of glucose were performed on a Hitachi 917 autoanalyzer by the hexokinase method using reagent from Roche Diagnostics. Analyses of total immunoreactive insulin was performed by a double-antibody radioimmunoassay (10). The assay was a 48-h, PEG-accelerated assay in which a limiting amount of guinea pig anti-insulin antibody was incubated with iodinated insulin tracer and plasma samples. The sensitivity limit of the assay was 3 µU/ml. The among assay coefficients of variation (CVs) of the two low- and high-insulin quality control samples were 6.9 and 4.6%, respectively. The CV on blind split duplicates was consistently <8.0%. Results of the childs health screening were mailed to parents explaining the values. In addition, waist circumference, assessment for the presence of acanthosis, blood pressure, skin folds, plasma lipid profile (total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, HDL cholesterol, and triglycerides), C-peptide, and proinsulin levels were determined but are not reported here.
Statistical analysis
BMI percentile by age and sex was calculated using the SAS program provided by the CDC referencing year 2000 (11,12). Youth with BMI P values are given from analyses of linear models that included a random effect for school to adjust for clustering of children within schools. Continuous outcomes were analyzed using linear mixed models and categorical outcomes using generalized estimating equations. Fasting insulin and 2-h insulin had skewed distributions and were log transformed. SAS statistical software version 8.2 (SAS Institute, Cary, NC) was used for all statistical analyses.
A total of 1,740 eighth-grade students provided informed consent; however, complete data were not collected on all students. The mean number of participants per school was 144 (range 85199). The mean recruitment rate (participants/total number of available eighth-grade students) was 50% per school with a range of 3367%. Recruitment in larger schools was closed even though more students were willing to participate. Participants who entered the study in each school were representative with regard to the percent of students with BMI 85th percentile, percent by sex, and percent minority compared with the entire eighth-grade student population of each school. For fasting glucose and insulin, 1,643 and 1,633 subjects, respectively, had data. For 2-h post-glucose load data, the number of students with glucose and insulin values was 1,128 and 1,124, respectively. The decreased number of specimens was due to an inappropriate dose of oral glucose solution given at one site to some students without untoward effects. This invalidated their postload results. The sample had an age of 13.6 ± 0.6 years (mean ± SD) and was 43.5% male, 52.7% Hispanic, 23.2% African American, 15.1% Caucasian, 2.2% Native American, and 6.3% other race/ethnicity. BMI was 24.3 ± 5.9 kg/m2. Girls were more advanced in puberty than boys; 93% of girls were Tanner stages 4 and 5, whereas 80.8% of boys were Tanner stages 3 and 4. A total of 13% reported having a first-degree relative with diabetes.
Of the students, 49% had a BMI
Glucose and insulin values rose across increasing BMI percentiles (Table 1). The increase was more pronounced for insulin than for glucose; 36.5% of students with a BMI <85th percentile had a fasting glucose 100 mg/dl, and 47% of those with a BMI 95th percentile had a fasting glucose 100 mg/dl. The percent of students with a fasting glucose 110 mg/dl doubled from 4.4 to 8.9% from the lowest to the highest BMI category. With regard to insulin, among youth with BMI <85th percentile, 16.0% had values 30 µU/ml, whereas 72.3% of those with BMI 95th percentile had elevated values. There was a nonlinear relationship between fasting insulin and BMI percentile, with the greatest increase in the curve starting in the 9095th BMI percentile. There were significant differences across racial/ethnic groups for BMI, fasting glucose, fasting insulin, and 2-h insulin (Table 1). Native Americans had the highest BMI and Caucasians had the lowest. There was no statistically significant difference between Hispanics and African Americans for BMI, but these two groups were significantly lower than Native Americans and significantly higher than Caucasians. Native Americans and Hispanics had the highest fasting glucose, and African Americans had the lowest. Despite having similar BMI, Hispanic youth had significantly higher fasting glucose levels than African Americans. The difference in mean fasting glucose was greater between Native Americans and African Americans than between Hispanics and African Americans, but the former difference was not statistically significant.
Table 2 shows mean fasting and 2-h glucose and insulin values by race/ethnicity and BMI percentile. Linear mixed models were used to explore whether the difference in BMI explained the difference in fasting glucose, fasting insulin, and 2-h insulin across race/ethnicity. The BMI-by-race interaction term was significant for fasting insulin (P = 0.0002) and 2-h insulin (P = 0.0253) but not for fasting glucose (P = 0.8596). Fasting insulin increased more in Hispanics and Caucasians from BMI percentiles <85th to 8595th; at
More than half (57.6%) of our students had both normal fasting and 2-h glucose levels, compared with 41.1% who had elevated fasting but normal 2-h glucose values. Very few students (2%) had both elevated fasting and 2-h glucose levels in the pre-diabetes range, and <1% had diabetes by any criteria (sample excluded students already reportedly diagnosed with diabetes).
Three risk factors for diabetes were identified (Table 3): 1) BMI
The purpose of this pilot study was to determine the prevalence of diabetes, pre-diabetes, and diabetes risk factors in eighth-grade students who were predominantly minority, to explore the role of race and ethnicity, and to evaluate the feasibility of collecting physical and laboratory data in the school setting.
This study showed that half of eighth-grade students and their families were willing to participate in a school-based health screening to determine risk factors for diabetes. The students who chose to participate in this study were representative of their schools general populations with regard to race/ethnicity, sex breakdown, and percent with BMI
Of the students who participated, 49% had a BMI The mean fasting glucose (98.2 mg/dl) was higher than values previously reported in population-based and clinical studies (1,1618). Ford et al. (17) reported that fasting glucose levels have decreased by 2.5 mg/dl over the last decade from NHANES III (19881994) to NHANES 2000 (19992000). They reported mean values in 13-year-old subjects of 91.9 mg/dl in 1994 and 85.3 mg/dl in 2000; the lower value reported in NHANES may reflect the smaller percent of overweight and ethnic minority youth in the NHANES cohort compared with ours. Our mean fasting glucose was higher than values found in recent clinical studies. These studies either included a large percentage of prepubertal subjects (18), who are known to have lower fasting glucose values, or a higher percentage of not only young children but also Caucasians and African Americans (16), groups that also have lower mean values. Our mean fasting glucose data are similar to those described by Goran and Gower (19) in subjects across the weight spectrum. For their subjects in Tanner stages 34, like our students, mean fasting glucose was 95.6 mg/dl for Caucasians and 96.2 mg/dl for African Americansan identical mean value to that found in our African-American subjects.
Using the new American Diabetes Association cutoff of 100 mg/dl, a surprisingly high percentage (40.5%) of youth in our study had IFG. Because there were a large number of students with fasting glucose values between 100 and 110 mg/dl, the percentage with IFG would have been much lower (6.2%) if we used the previous cutoff for fasting glucose of 110 mg/dl. Very few studies have described the percentage of adolescents with IFG using the 100-mg/dl cutoff. Using the NHANES 2000 data, Duncan et al. (20) found that 7.6% of adolescents had fasting glucose values A number of factors could account for the high percentage of our students with glucose dysregulation. It is likely our percentage with IFG was high, as was the mean fasting glucose, because our sample included a high percentage of overweight youth. IFG increased across BMI percentile categories. Another contributing factor was the high percentage of Hispanics and Native Americans in our cohort (about three-quarters of the students); 812% more Hispanic and Native American students had IFG compared with African Americans and Caucasians. Finally, our subjects, particularly the boys, were midpubertal, a time of innate insulin resistance. It is also possible that stress may have influenced our results. The setting in which phlebotomy was performeda noisy crowded gym or assembly hall with each subject in view of peers and study personnel and without their parentsmay have caused stress. Stress activation of the hypothalamic-adrenal axis could elevate cortisol and other counterregulatory hormones and thereby increase glucose values. This stress response may have downregulated by the time of the second blood draw 2 h later because students had become familiar with the procedure and had been kept quiet. We believe we did all we could to mitigate students eating or drinking before the blood draw, falsely elevating the number of subjects with IFG. Students were given ample opportunity to admit they were not fasting, reschedule the blood tests, and still receive the full $50 incentive.
Very few of our subjects had 2-h post-glucose load values in the IGT range (
Many subjects had elevated fasting insulin levels (mean value 30 µU/ml), indicative of insulin resistance (13). There was a twofold increase in mean fasting insulin levels when comparing those with a BMI <85th percentile (22.5 µU/ml) to those with a BMI
In conclusion, the purpose of this study was to determine if there was a high enough percentage of students with IGT or diabetes to power a trial targeting these outcomes. Whereas we found a very low prevalence of both IGT and diabetes, our subjects exhibited a high prevalence of risk factors for diabetes. These included IFG (fasting glucose
The STOPP-T2D Prevention Study Group The following individuals and institutions contributed to the reported results as members of the STOPP-T2D Prevention Study Group (*writing group). Field Center (Baylor College of Medicine): T. Baranowski*, PhD; J. Baranowski, MS, RD, LD; A. Canada; K. Cullen, DrPH, RD, LD; R. Jago, PhD; M. Missaghian, MS, MPH; D. Thompson, PhD; V. Thompson, DrPH; B. Walker, RN. Field Center (University of California at Irvine): D.M. Cooper*, MD; S. Bassin, EdD; K. Blackler; F. Culler, MD; D. Ford, P. Galassetti, MD, PhD. Field Center (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill): J. Harrell*, PhD, RN; R.G. McMurray, PhD; J. Buse, MD; M.A. Morris, MD; K. Kirby. Coordinating Center (George Washington University): K. Hirst*, PhD; S. Edelstein, ScM; L. El ghormli, MSc; S. Grau, MA; L. Pyle, MS. Program Office (National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases): B. Linder*, MD, PhD. Central Blood Laboratory (Northwest Research Lipid Laboratories): S. Marcovina, PhD, ScD. STOPP-T2D Study Chair: F.R. Kaufman*, MD (Childrens Hospital Los Angeles). Other study group members: M. Goran*, PhD (University of Southern California); K. Resnicow*, PhD (University of Michigan).
This work was completed with funding from National Institutes of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases/National Institutes of Health Grant U01-DK61230 (George Washington University), U01-DK61249 (University of California at Irvine), U01-DK61231 (Baylor College of Medicine), and U01-DK61223 (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill).
* A complete listing of STOPP-T2D Prevention Study Group members can be found in the APPENDIX. A table elsewhere in this issue shows conventional and Système International (SI) units and conversion factors for many substances. Received for publication June 7, 2005. Accepted for publication October 23, 2005.
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