Children with both asthma and diabetes seem to have a harder time keeping their blood sugar under control, a new study released Monday suggests. According to Reuters, researchers found that among 2,000 3- to 21-year-olds with diabetes, 11 percent had asthma -- slightly higher than the 9 percent rate among children and young adults in the United States.
Additionally, when the researchers looked at young people with type 2 diabetes, they found that 16 percent in that group had asthma, compared with 10 percent of those with type 1 diabetes.
In the study, kids with both type 1 diabetes and asthma were more likely to have poor blood sugar control than their peers who were asthma-free[15.5 percent versus 9 percent], although the reasons are not exactly clear.
But according to lead researcher Mary Helen Black, of the department of research and evaluation at Kaiser Permanente Southern California, the higher rate of asthma among young people with type 2 diabetes suggests a role for obesity, Reuters was told.
"It's pretty well-established that there's an obesity-asthma connection," Black told Reuters Health in an interview. One reason why young people with type 1 diabetes and asthma had poorer blood sugar control is that there is a "real biological connection," Black continued.