Abstract
The worldwide epidemic of childhood obesity in the last decades is responsible for the occurrence in pediatrics of disorders once mainly found in adults, such as the metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes. A key factor in their pathogenesis is insulin resistance, a phenomenon occurring mainly in obese subjects with a general resistance to the insulin effect only on carbohydrates metabolism. Given that the metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes in youths are driven by obesity, the prevalence of the latter will strongly influence their prevalence. Although obesity is the most frequent cause of insulin resistance in youths, it should be taken into consideration that a transient physiological insulin-resistant state occurs in children during puberty, maybe due to the increase in growth hormone and sex steroids, and that this state may worsen the insulin resistance present in obese children accelerating the progression to metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes. Thus, the key points to understand the progression leading to the occurrence of metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes are (1) when and how insulin resistance occurs in obese children and adolescents and (2) what are the underlying putative defects leading to glucose dysregulation.
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Santoro, N., Giannini, C., Caprio, S. (2012). Metabolic Syndrome in Childhood as a Risk Factor for Type 2 Diabetes. In: Lipshultz, S., Messiah, S., Miller, T. (eds) Pediatric Metabolic Syndrome. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-2366-8_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-2366-8_4
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