ESPE Abstracts

Background: Type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) is the second most frequent chronic disease in childhood and adolescence. Chronic hyperglycemia is responsible for numerous long term complications, not only microvascular (retinopathy, nephropathy and neuropathy), but also macrovascular (ischemic cardiopathy, cerebrovascular disease and peripheral vascular disease). On the other hand, the T1DM immune modification is responsible for an increased incidence of other autoimmune diseases.

Objective and hypotheses: The aim of this study is to describe the prevalence of overweight and obesity in a group of patients with T1DM and to determine the consequences of the lipid profile and metabolic control.

Method: We designed an observational, transversal and analytic study, based on patient data from the Pediatric Diabetic Consult in a Tertiary Hospital in Portugal. The studied variables were: gender, age, age at diagnosis, weight, height, BMI, blood pressure (BP), HbA1c, total cholesterol (TC), HDL cholesterol (cHDL), LDL cholesterol (cLDL) and triglycerides (TG).

Results: A 104 T1DM population was obtained with a median age of 12.5 years (3.3–17.9 years). The prevalence of overweight was 13.5% (n=14), 50% male, and obesity was 4.8% (n=5), 80% male. Hypertension was only observed in those patients with overweight (n=2; 14%). 12.5% (n=13) of our T1DM population had dyslipidemia. 15.8% of 19 patients with overweight/obesity had dyslipidemia. There were not significant differences in HbA1c control between obese patients and the rest of the sample (7.9 vs 7.8%).

Conclusion: Overweight and obesity in children and adolescents has increased dramatically since the 1980s. Although it is known that diabetes and elevated BMI increases cardiovascular risk factors, in our study we did not verified these results.