Family history and risk of insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus: a population-based case-control study

Abstract

Insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (type 1) is a common chronic disease of childhood occurring throughout the world. In the literature, its most important determinants include genetic, environmental and familial factors. We evaluated family history as a determinant of the risk of type 1 diabetes mellitus with a population-based case-control study. Information about type 1 patients was taken from the dedicated register of the Abruzzo Region; the register has been collecting incident cases in the age group 0-14 years, diagnosed between 1 January 1990 and 31 December 1996. The control group was taken from the lists of patients attending family pediatricians. The family history data for type 1 and type 2 patients was obtained by a questionnaire, administered to their parents. The risk of type 1 diabetes mellitus associated with its occurrence in first- and second-degree relatives was estimated using logistic regression methods. Our results show that the risk is indeed increased with a positive family history (OR=3.96; 95% CI 1.54-10.14). This shows that the risk of type 1 diabetes mellitus for children whose fathers are affected by the disease is 11 times higher with respect to controls. Moreover, the risk for children whose brothers are affected by the disease is 20 times higher with respect to controls. In contrast, a family history for type 2 diabetes mellitus does not influence the risk.

Early infant feeding and risk of type 1 diabetes mellitus—a nationwide population‐based case–control study in pre‐school children

“…We estimated an OR of about 13, even higher than the risk among the under 5s in a Swedish [11]. A case of type 2 diabetes in the family was not associated with an increased type 1 diabetes risk in our study, in line with some [52] but not all investigations [11,21]. Epidemiological evidence on the association between socio-economic status and type 1 diabetes risk in children is fairly conflicting, possibly owing to different study designs or differing methods for assessing social status.…”

“…A positive family history of type 1 diabetes has consistently been reported to raise type 1 diabetes risk among relatives [2,9,11,20,21,23,51,52]. But reported ORs varied considerably, partly due to different age groups investigated or different definitions of familial type 1 diabetes.…”

Early childhood risk factors associated with type 1 diabetes – is gender important?

“…In the literature increasing maternal and paternal age have been found both to increase the risk [2][3][4], while in other studies [5,6] no association was found, in addition being first born is found both to increase [4,7] and decrease the risk [2]. By contrast a family history of diabetes is consistently found to increase the risk [8,9]. Besides different intrauterine risk factors affect the risk of childhood diabetes; prenatal growth was a risk factor in the studies by Dahlquist et al [2] and Stene et al [10] while others dispute this [11][12][13][14], decreasing gestational age was associated with an increased risk in a Danish study [14] while other authors have not found an association [5,10,11,15].…”

A Population-Based Assessment of the Familial Component of Chronic Kidney Disease Mortality

“…This phenomenon can be explained by genetic predisposition to diabetes and hypertension [30,31,32,33,34], the common causes of ESRD and CKD, as well as the predominantly genetic etiology of other causes of renal failure (e.g., polycystic kidney disease, Alport’s syndrome). Potential confounding of evidence for a familial component by the presence of hypertension, but not diabetes, has been demonstrated in the past [11].…”