The Long-Term Consequences of Type 2 Diabetes in Children
Children with type 2 diabetes face a high incidence of vascular complications as they age into young adulthood, with an 80% incidence of at least one complication during up to 15 years of follow-up. Arterial stiffness and worsened cardiac function often appear in these children within 2-5 years of diagnosis and seem driven in part by the development of hypertension and worsening A1c levels. The dire prognosis is a reason to aggressively treat these patients with antidiabetic medications from drug classes with proven cardiovascular disease protection, specifically sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitors and glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) agonists.