ESPE Abstracts

Background: There are studies supporting the seasonality of diabetes according to date of diagnosis and date of birth, with most T1D children being diagnosed in fall and winter and most of them been born in the same period. That is in concordance with previously published data from 1978 to 2008 in our country.

Objective and hypotheses: To assess whether there is a seasonal variation of diabetes onset according to date of diagnosis and date of birth of incident cases, in a large cohort of newly diagnosed T1D children aged 0–16 y, between 2010 and 2015.

Method: We retrospectively collected data of 256 children and adolescents (121 females) aged 0–16 years (mean age 8.4±4.07 years) admitted in our clinic with newly diagnosed T1D between 2010 and 2015. We investigated whether there was a seasonality of diabetes onset according to date of diagnosis and date of birth of the patients.

Results: In our cohort there was a significant prevalence of children aged >5 years (92, 36.7% for the age group 5–10 years and 92, 36.7% for the age group 10–15 years) comparing to those <5 years (61, 24.3%), (P: 0.036). According to date of diagnosis there was no statistically significant seasonal variation of diabetes onset (P: 0.625). However, according to date of birth, there was a statistically significant difference between children born in fall (81 children, 31.6%) than those born in spring (56, 21.9%) and winter (57, 22.3%), respectively (P: 0.037).

Conclusion: In our cohort of newly diagnosed T1D children and adolescents there was no apparent seasonal variation according to date of diagnosis- probably due to the mild temperature variations through the year in Mediterranean countries. However, there was a significantly higher percentage of T1D children born in fall than in winter and spring respectively.