BMJ 1995;310:1672 (24 June)

Letters

Incidence of diabetes in children

EDITOR,--Emma Wadsworth and colleagues report the incidence of insulin dependent diabetes in children under 5 years in the British Isles.1 Their data suggest that the incidence remained stable over four years. The use of "snapshot" years to address the question of potentially increasing incidence must have limited value, even over a large geographical area, when random variation substantially affects annual numbers.

The population based Yorkshire children's diabetes register includes 1650 children and for the years 1978-90 is 97% complete.2 A time span of 16 years is likely to reflect true changes in incidence, and data from the Yorkshire register were used to calculate age specific incidences (per 100000 per year) for 1978-93. The figure shows smoothed rates (three year moving average) for ages 0-4, 5-9, 10-14, and 0-14. Testing for a significant rise in incidence ({chi}2 test for trend) showed no evidence of an increase in the youngest age group . . . [Full text of this article]


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Relevant Article

Insulin dependent diabetes in children under 5: incidence and ascertainment validation for 1992
Emma Wadsworth, Julian Shield, Linda Hunt, and David Baum
BMJ 1995 310: 700-703. [Abstract] [Full Text]

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