THOUGH you might not guess it, Finland is the diabetes capital of the world. And solving the mystery of why type 1 diabetes is so prevalent in this Nordic country could be the key to teasing out the causes of the disease.
Worldwide, the incidence of type 1 diabetes, which generally occurs in childhood, is . People with the disease lose the ability to make insulin, the hormone which controls blood glucose levels.
Since the 1950s rates of type 1 diabetes have been higher in Finland than anywhere else. 鈥淲hy it鈥檚 so high in Finland really is a mystery,鈥� says Valma Harjutsalo of the National Public 午夜福利1000集合 Institute in Helsinki. What鈥檚 more, she has found that (The Lancet, vol 371, p 1777). Between 1980 and 2005, the incidence in Finnish children aged 14 years and under doubled from 31 to 64 cases per 100,000 鈥� much faster than projections, which indicated that it would take until 2010 for the incidence to reach 50 per 100,000.
Advertisement
Changes in lifestyle are one possible cause. Overfeeding in infants might 鈥渂urn out鈥� the insulin-making beta cells in the pancreas. Harjutsalo notes that the proportion of Finnish children aged between 5 and 15 who are overweight has doubled from 9.5 to 20 per cent since the mid-1980s.
Overeating is on the rise globally, so why is Finland especially prone to diabetes? An intriguing possibility is that as food intake rises, genetic tendencies common among Finns are being brought into play.
Tantalisingly, the neighbouring Russian republic of Karelia, which is much poorer than Finland but shares its genetic ancestry, has a rate of type 1 diabetes that is one-sixth that in Finland. Harjutsalo hopes a comparison of lifestyle factors in Karelia and Finland will uncover the mechanisms behind Finland鈥檚 soaring diabetes rate.
