ENDOCRINOLOGY
Making Associations continued
“ It ’ s not just that most of them have some complications . It ’ s that quite a few of them have a lot . And they ’ re young .”
PHIL ZEITLER , MD , PHD
TODAY2 sought out the raw information for answering those questions in part through a structured interview conducted with participants every six months . They asked about encounters with community medical care and sought records . They asked about medications and whether participants could afford to take them regularly . They asked if participants were working , if their parents were working , where they were living , how many other people were living in the home .
For its five years , TODAY2 also partnered with another major diabetes study , SEARCH for Diabetes in Youth , led by Dana Dabelea , MD , PhD , Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Colorado School of Public Health on the Anschutz Medical Campus . SEARCH administered the same interview to its own participants , youth with both type 1 and type 2 diabetes . That effectively doubles TODAY2 ’ s data and adds a basis for comparison with type 1 diabetes .
Many more partnerships are in the pipeline . As part of the Progress in Diabetes Genetics in Youth ( ProDiGY ) Consortium , the first genetic study of youth-onset type 2 diabetes , the TODAY Group is collaborating with SEARCH and another large study known as T2D-GENES to analyze around 10 million imputed variants in more than 3,000 young people with type 2 diabetes , along with 6,000 adult controls ( 4 ).
PHIL ZEITLER , MD , PHD
Medical Director , Clinical & Translational Research Center Section Head , Endocrinology Children ’ s Hospital Colorado
Professor-Pediatrics , Endocrinology University of Colorado School of Medicine
PETTER BJORNSTAD , MD
Pediatric endocrinologist Children ’ s Hospital Colorado
Assistant Professor , Pediatrics- Endocrinology University of Colorado School of Medicine
They ’ re also collaborating with DCCT / EDIC , a study that began
in the 1970s and whose participants are now reaching their 60s , which will provide high-density , long-term data on the outcomes of people who were diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in their teens . And they ’ re comparing data with the Diabetes Prevention Program , which studied the feasibility of using metformin and lifestyle medicine to prevent diabetes in adults . It continued to follow participants who did develop diabetes in much the same way TODAY2 did . The comparison will go a long way toward
8 | CHILDREN ’ S HOSPITAL COLORADO