Academic Skills in Children with Early-Onset Type 1 Diabetes: Effects of Diabetes-related Risk Factors

Abstract

Background: Diabetes Mellitus has a marked effect on brain function and structure in children and adolescents. Cognitive dysfunction should be listed as one of the many complications of diabetes, along with retinopathy, neuropathy, nephropathy, and cardiovascular. Objective: To determine the effect of diabetes –related risk factors on cognitive functions in children with Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus. Subjects and Methods: A total of 50 children and adolescents with T1DM with mean age (11.76%±1.95) compared to 25 healthy controls age and sex matched. Patients were subdivided into 2 groups according to their glycated hemoglobin with mean HbA1c8.42±1.89% (group 1:HbA1c more than 7.5%, group 2: HbA1c less than 7.5%).Patients were subjected to full history taking regarding (age of onset, insulin therapy, no. of attacks of hypoglycemia and diabetic keto acidosis). Results: There was a positive correlation between the age of onset of diabetes and cognitive dysfunction, the earlier the age the more cognitive dysfunction (p less than 0.05), significant difference was found between poor glycemic controlled patients and good glycemic controlled patients (p less than 0.05), a correlation was found between patients with history of one or more attacks of DKA and patients with no history of DKA attack (p less than 0.05), no correlation was found between frequency of attacks of hypoglycemia and cognitive functions affection. Conclusion: Patients with T1DM have been found to have cognitive deficits that can be attributed to their disease. Early age onset, poor glycemic control and DKA is an important risk factor.