Not Just for Adults.(type 2 diabetes cases in children on the rise)(Column)

As childhood-obesity rates skyrocket, doctors are seeing an alarming rise in a costly and debilitating disease once unheard of in children: adult onset, or type 2, diabetes. Unlike type 1, or "juvenile" diabetes--an autoimmune disorder in which the pancreas stops producing insulin--type 2 diabetes is linked inextricably to diet and lifestyle. It usually develops only in individuals with a genetic predisposition to the condition, but requires a trigger--typically, insulin resistance resulting from overeating. The disease used to be seen only in adults because it took years to exhaust the body's natural insulin production and resistance. No longer. With kids from Austria to Australia eating a diet laden with fats and sugars, type 2 diabetes is striking at ever earlier ages. Says Arlan Rosenbloom, a Florida-based pediatric endocrinologist: "We do not see type 2 in kids of normal weight."

The pattern is similar all over the world. In the United States and Britain, half of the new cases of diabetes in children are type 2, compared with just 4 percent in 1990. In China, where 90 percent of the children who have contracted the disease are now type 2, experts say the incidence has been rising by 9 percent each year since 1992. Between 1975 and 1995 in Japan, cases of type 2 in children increased fourfold. And children in Latin America could see a 45 percent rise in the disease by 2010.

The trend mirrors the explosion of diabetes among the general population. In 1985 an estimated 30 million people ...