Childhood diabetes in China - Enormous variation by place and ethnic group

OBJECTIVE - To investigate the incidence rate of IDDM in China. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS - The Chinese IDDM registry was established in 1991 as part of the World Health Organization's Multinational Project for Childhood Diabetes (DiaMond) project. Twenty-two centers were developed to monitor the incidence of IDDM in children <15 years of age. The population under investigation includes >20 million individuals, representing similar to 7% of the children in China. Capture-recapture methods were used to estimate the ascertainment. RESULTS - The overall ascertainment-corrected IDDM incidence rate in China was 0.51 per 100,000, the lowest rate ever reported. There was a 12-fold geographic variation (0.13-1.61 per 100,000). In general, the incidence rate was higher in the north and the east. There was a sixfold difference among ethnic groups (highest: Mongol group, 1.82 per 100,000; lowest: Zhuang group, 0.32 per 100,000). CONCLUSIONS - China has an extremely low overall IDDM incidence rate. China also has the greatest geographic and ethnic variation seen for any country.