Pediatric growth patterns in youth‐onset type 2 diabetes mellitus: Implications for physiologically‐based pharmacokinetic models

An accurate understanding of the changes in height and weight of children with age is critical to the development of models predicting drug concentrations in children (i.e., physiologically‐based pharmacokinetic models). However, curves describing the growth of a typical population of children may not accurately characterize growth of children with various conditions, such as obesity. Therefore, to develop height and weight versus age growth curves for youth who were diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, we extracted data from electronic medical records. Robust nonlinear models were parameterized to the equations describing height and weight versus age as defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). CDC z‐scores were calculated using an internal program. The growth curves and z‐scores were compared to CDC norms. Youth with type 2 diabetes were increasingly heavier than CDC norms from early childhood. Except for a period around puberty, youth with type 2 diabetes were, on average, shorter than CDC norms, resulting in shorter average adult height. Deviations in growth were apparent in youth who develop type 2 diabetes; such deviations may be expected for other conditions as well, and disease‐specific growth curves should be considered during development of model‐informed drug development for pediatric conditions.