Incidence trends for childhood type 1 diabetes in India

It is estimated that India is housing about 97,700 children with type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM). A study of 30 children with insulin-dependent diabetes with age at diagnosis ≤15 years, conducted in 1992, reported a prevalence of 0.26/1000 children. The peak age at diagnosis was 12 years. This was the first population-based study of prevalence of insulin-dependent diabetes in South India and shows that insulin-dependent diabetes is not rare and is higher than that reported from many other Asian countries. The Karnataka state T1DM registry listed an incidence of 3.7/100,000 in boys and 4.0/100,000 in girls over 13 years of data collection. At Karnal, in Haryana, the prevalence of T1DM is 26.6/100,000 in urban and 4.27/100,000 in rural areas of the district, leading to an average prevalence of 10.20/100,000 population. Karnal city has a relatively high prevalence of T1DM (31.9/100,000). An estimated 18,000 children under the age of 15 were newly diagnosed for T1DM in the year 2011 in the above-mentioned regions. The prevalence of T1DM in children is 111,500 according to a World Health Organization report of the International Diabetes Federation for the South-East Asian Region.