Why Is Type 1 Diabetes Rising Worldwide?

Why Is Type 1 Diabetes Rising Worldwide?

• By Maryn McKenna
• January 26, 2012

We’ve gotten sadly accustomed by now to warnings about obesity and its effect on health: joint damage, heart disease, stroke, diabetes and its complications such as blindness and amputation. We almost take for granted that as obesity increases worldwide, diabetes will also, and it is. That is, type 2 diabetes — the kind that is linked to obesity and used to be called adult-onset diabetes — is rising as obesity does.

But here’s a puzzle: Type 1 diabetes — the autoimmune disease that begins in childhood and used to be called juvenile-onset diabetes — is rising too, around the globe, at 3 percent to 5 percent per year. And at this point, no one can quite say why.


I have a column in the February Scientific American, on newsstands now and live on the web, exploring this conundrum. There is a raft of researchers exploring the issue, but so far there is only one thing they can say for sure: The increase, which began in the 1950s and accelerated in about the 1980s, is happening too fast to be due solely to genetic change. Something in the environment is driving the increase. But what?   READ MORE