In the United States, prevalence of type 2 diabetes has increased tremendously (five folds) since the 1960s.

However, as reported at the annual meeting and clinical congress of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists, children usually do not exhibit symptoms of diabetes or asymptomatic.

Being asymptomatic could lead to the possibility that in their 20s, these children could already be suffering from the long-term complications of pre-existing type 2 diabetes.

As explained by Peter H. Bennett, MB, from the Phoenix, Arizona, research branch of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) of the National Institutes of Health:

"Scientists first identified type 2 (formerly "adult onset") diabetes among the Pima Indians in the mid-1960s. In a recent survey, approximately 20% of the diabetes diagnosed by physicians in Pima Indians younger than 20 years was type 2.

One of the difficulties - still - is in making the clinical decision of whether a child has type 1 or type 2 diabetes."

This all boils down to the fact that numbers being reported these days on the prevalence of diabetes could very well be the low minimum, the actual numbers of diabetes patients could actually a LOT bigger that has been reported.

Find more details from the full report.