(Seoul = Yonhap News) Reporter Seong Seong-ho = The rate of developing the same disease in siblings of children and adolescents with type 1 diabetes was found to be 11.5 times that of general children.
On the 13th, the National Institute of Health, Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency, announced the results of a study analyzing the occurrence patterns and clinical characteristics within the families of type 1 diabetes patients in children and adolescents.
This study, supported by the National Institute of Health, is Korea's first and largest multi-institutional joint study involving Seoul National University Bundang Hospital, Ajou University Hospital, and Gangnam Severance Hospital.
The researchers analyzed the incidence of the disease among the patients' relatives according to family history among 936 patients with type 1 diabetes under the age of 18 diagnosed at 18 university hospitals in Korea between January 2010 and August 2024.
Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease in which the body's immune system attacks the beta cells of the pancreas that produce insulin, causing no insulin or only a very small amount of insulin to be produced. It is a chronic disease that mainly occurs in children and adolescents.
If there is a lack of insulin, blood sugar cannot be regulated normally, resulting in a prolonged hyperglycemic state, and if not treated, acute or long-term complications may occur. Therefore, insulin treatment must be continued after diagnosis.
Until now, type 1 diabetes was known to be a very rare hereditary disease.
Recently, research results have been published on the pattern of occurrence within families, mainly in Western countries such as Europe, but there was no data targeting children and adolescents in Korea.
As a result of the study, 32 (3.4%) of the 936 patients had a family history of type 1 diabetes, including a parent, brother, or sister. Among these, 1.1% had parents who were patients.
In particular, as a result of analyzing 779 brothers and sisters of patients, 23 (3.0%) developed type 1 diabetes.
This is 11.5 times the incidence of type 1 diabetes in the general pediatric population in Korea (0.26%).
In the case of twin patients, the incidence of type 1 diabetes was high at 42.9%, showing that the influence of genetic factors was very strong.
Additionally, patients diagnosed for the second time in the family had lower blood sugar and glycated hemoglobin levels at the time of diagnosis compared to patients diagnosed for the first time. That means it was healthy.
This second patient also had a significantly lower incidence of diabetic ketoacidosis, a typical severe acute complication that can be life-threatening.
An official from the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency explained, "In the case of the second patient in the family, his health was much better thanks to the family's management. Through this study, we confirmed that type 1 diabetes may also have a hereditary history, and the patient's siblings can now be considered a high-risk group."
Professor Kim Jae-hyeon of the Department of Pediatrics at Seoul National University Bundang Hospital said, "This study is the first in Korea and has a very high public health value in that, through large-scale analysis, it has revealed the occurrence status of type 1 diabetes patients in Korea according to their family history and the specific risk of developing type 1 diabetes in brothers and sisters."
In the future, the National Institutes of Health plans to form a network with 42 institutions nationwide to establish a national registry (patient registration study) by long-term tracking 5,000 patients by 2030, and based on this, prepare national standard treatment guidelines and prevention and management strategies.
