Children with low birth weight are at higher risk of heart disease

Children with a birth weight under 2.5 kg stand at the risk of becoming underweight and can experience cognitive difficulties as well as diabetes and cardiovascular disease later in life, a study has found.

However, early iron supplementation seems to provide some protection, researchers said.

The study consisted of 285 children who were born with a marginally low birth weight, 2-2.5 kg, and a control group of 95 children born with a normal birth weight.

Data on weight, height, body composition, blood pressure, and blood tests for blood sugar, insulin and blood lipids were collected. In addition, the children's IQ, and various other abilities were also tested.

Among the children born with low birth weight, a clear majority only have a marginally low weight, but they are rarely prioritised in studies.

The results were surprising. That low birth weight children who received early iron supplementation had a lower blood pressure in school age has never been shown before. We may have identified a way to partially protect against cardiovascular diseases, even if more research is needed.

The study showed that children born with only a little too low birth weight have more cognitive difficulties, such as lower verbal IQ and poorer attention and coordination abilities in comparison to children born with normal birth weight.      

The below average test results may lead to more school difficulties and behavioural problems to a larger extent than for children born with normal birth weight. It's important that we are aware of this, both in the health care system as well as in the educational system, in order to early capture those who may need additional support.

Children born as marginally underweight have an increased risk of still being underweight at the age of seven, the researchers said.

Early signs of a disrupted insulin and blood sugar balance were also found, a well-known sign for increased risk of later developing diabetes and cardiovascular diseases.

Infants who received iron supplementation in early childhood had lower blood pressure, which is a previously unknown relationship.

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Diabetes is made up of FIVE different conditions - not two, discover researchers

Diabetes is actually made up of five conditions, researchers have discovered.

For decades it has been considered to be two different forms - type one, an autoimmune disease in which people stop producing insulin, and type two, in which the body becomes resistant to insulin.

But now a major project in some Scandinavian has found type two diabetes should actually be categorised as four different diseases.

The researchers, said the findings should prompt a ‘paradigm shift’ in the way people treat diabetes.

They believe the more precise groupings- each of which are genetically distinct - will aid diagnosis, help tailor treatments and lead to proper precision medicines for the disease.

The researchers said type one should be renamed ‘severe autoimmune diabetes’.

And type two should be split into four categories, two serious and two mild.

The first of these - severe insulin-deficient diabetes - was shown to include people with high blood sugar, low insulin production and moderate insulin resistance.

Another type - severe insulin-resistant diabetes - is predominantly linked to obesity and severe insulin resistance.

Mild obesity-related diabetes includes obese patients, but is less serious and includes people who fall ill at a relatively young age.

And the final group, mild age-related diabetes, is the largest group, with 40 per cent of all patients, and consists mostly of elderly patients.

Diabetes is rapidly becoming Britain’s fastest growing health crisis, with the number of affected patients having doubled in 20 years to 3.7million.

The researchers, whose work is published in the journal, based their findings on 14,775 newly diagnosed patients in some countries.

Researcher  said: ‘This is the first step towards personalised treatment of diabetes.

‘Current diagnostics and classification of diabetes are insufficient and unable to predict future complications or choice of treatment.

‘Existing treatment guidelines are limited by the fact they respond to poor metabolic control when it has developed, but do not have the means to predict which patients will need intensified treatment.

‘This study moves us towards a more clinically useful diagnosis, and represents an important step towards precision medicine in diabetes.’ Dr. said: ‘Type one and type two diabetes are very different conditions, but we don’t yet know enough about the subtypes that could exist within them.

‘Finding those subtypes will help us personalise treatments and potentially reduce the risk of diabetes-related complications in the future.

‘This research takes a promising step toward breaking down type twp diabetes in more detail, but we still need to know more about these subtypes before we can understand what this means for people living with the condition.

‘For example, whether we’d find the same subtypes in people of different ethnicity or nationality.’  

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