Dietary factors and the risk of developing insulin dependent diabetes in childhood.

Abstract

Objective-To study different nutrients and food additives as risk factors for insulin dependent diabetes mellitus in childhood.Design-Prospective case-control study. Parents of the children being studied were asked to fill in a questionnaire regarding the children's frequency,of consumption of various foods. Parents of children with diabetes were asked about the period before onset of the disease.Setting-Population based study throughout Sweden.Subjects-339 Children aged 0-14 who had recently developed insulin dependent diabetes mellitus and 528 control children matched for age, sex, and county of residence who were traced through the official Swedish population register.Main outcome measures-Foods were classified according to their content of protein, fat, carbohydrates, monosaccharides or disaccharides, nitrosamines, nitrates or nitrites, vitamin C, and fibres. The frequency of intake was categorised as high, medium, and low and the relative risk for developing insulin dependent diabetes was estimated for the three frequencies of intake and calculated as odds ratios.Results-Significant linear trends for dose response in odds ratios by frequency of intake were shown for solid foods containing high amounts of protein (odds ratio for low frequency of intake 1 0; medium 2-3; and high 5.5), and nitrosamines (1.0; 1-7; 2.6) and significant but non-linear trends were found for carbohydrates (1 0; 1 3; 4 4) and nitrates or nitrites (1-0; 0-8; 2-4). The significant trends were not affected when the results were standardised for possible confounders. No significant increases in odds ratios were found for protein, monosaccharides and disaccharides, vitamin C, and fibres.Conclusion -Nutrients and food additives such as protein, carbohydrate, and nitrosamine compounds may influence the risk of developing insulin dependent diabetes in childhood and significant trends in odds ratios indicate a causal relation.

Meat consumption and the risk of type 2 diabetes: a systematic review and meta-analysis of cohort studies

“…A number of processed meats contain nitrites and nitrates which can be converted to nitrosamines by interaction with amino compounds either in the stomach or within the food product. Nitrosamines have been found to be toxic to pancreatic beta cells and to increase the risk of type 1 and type 2 diabetes in animal studies [57][58][59], and of type 1 diabetes in some [60,61], but not all [62], epidemiological studies. Other possible mechanisms may involve advanced glycation end-products [63], increased levels of inflammatory mediators [13,47,64] and γ-glutamyltransferase [65], and lower levels of adiponectin [66] with high meat intake.…”

Diabetes-associated HLA genotypes affect birthweight in the general population

“…Numerous triggers for type 1 diabetes have been proposed. These include viral infections [39][40][41], dietary factors (cow's milk, nitrosamines, high protein intake) [42,43], neonatal jaundice and ABO incompatibility [44], neonatal respiratory disease [44], early supplementary milk-based feeding, short time of breast-feeding [42,45] and stress events such as severe life events [42,46,47]. Several studies have found that children who later develop diabetes have a higher BW than controls, and also have an increased linear growth in childhood [15,16,42,48,49].…”

Can we slow the rising incidence of childhood-onset autoimmune diabetes? The overload hypothesis

“…Despite difficulties in estimating the quantitative intake of calories and nutrients, reports indicate that children who go on to develop diabetes have been overfed in terms of total calories and all categories of nutrients [30] before onset of disease, when taking body size into account [31]. A high intake of monosaccharides and disaccharides seemed particularly associated with risk [31].…”