The number of individuals with diabetes varies enormously from country to country. In Europe and the US it is estimated that 50 million people have Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes. The risk of a child developing Type 1 diabetes before adulthood is approximately 0.3-0.5% in the Scandinavian countries. This incidence varies between countries, and an estimated 430,000 children and adolescents aged 14 years or under are thought to have diabetes worldwide. Each year, another 77,000 children in this age group are found to have diabetes, as are a further 119,000 aged 15 years or more.
In the US, approximately 13,000 new cases of diabetes are diagnosed in children every year. Some 154,000 American individuals below the age of 19 years have diabetes, making this the second most common chronic disease in school-age children (the first being asthma). In the UK there are at least 20,000 children under 15 year with diabetes. In Sweden there are approximately 6,500 children and adolescents with Type 1 diabetes and there are around 700 new cases of diabetes every year below the age of 18 years.
There is a slow but steady increase in the number of cases diagnosed per year in most countries, especially in the younger age group. The overall annual increase in Europe in the age group 0-14 years from 1989-1999 has been 3.2%. However, in Sweden the incidence in the age group 15 -34 years is decreasing, which indicates that the same individuals are getting diabetes at an earlier age. The same trend of a continuing rise in number of new cases in the ages 0-14 years over the last 20 years (around 6% per year) but not for young adults aged 15-29 has been found in the UK.
Finland has the highest incidence of childhood and adolescent diabetes in the world and Sweden comes in third after Sardinia. In Japan childhood and adolescent Type 1 diabetes is very uncommon. Although 120 million people live in Japan (compared to Sweden’s 8 million) the actual number of Japanese children and teenagers with diabetes is approximately the same as the number in Sweden.
We don’t know why there is such a difference from one country to another, but it depends at least partly on cultural and environmental differences. For example, diabetes is more common among Asian immigrants living in UK than in their relatives remaining in their countries of origin.