Association of environmental markers with childhood type 1 diabetes mellitus revealed by a long questionnaire on early life exposures and lifestyle in a case-control study

Background

The incidence of childhood type 1 diabetes (T1D) incidence is rising in many countries, supposedly because of changing environmental factors, which are yet largely unknown. The purpose of the study was to unravel environmental markers associated with T1D.

Methods

Cases were children with T1D from the French Isis-Diab cohort. Controls were schoolmates or friends of the patients. Parents were asked to fill a 845-item questionnaire investigating the child’s environment before diagnosis. The analysis took into account the matching between cases and controls. A second analysis used propensity score methods.

Results

We found a negative association of several lifestyle variables, gastroenteritis episodes, dental hygiene, hazelnut cocoa spread consumption, wasp and bee stings with T1D, consumption of vegetables from a farm and death of a pet by old age.

Conclusions

The found statistical association of new environmental markers with T1D calls for replication in other cohorts and investigation of new environmental areas.

Trial registration

Clinical-Trial.gov NCT02212522. Registered August 6, 2014. 

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12889-016-3690-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

[Education for chronic cardiologic diseases in a transversal multidisciplinary unit: the experience of a general hospital center]

Treatments for congestive heart failure, hypertension and cardiovascular risk have significantly changed and have become more complex. The have also become more and more effective thanks to the results of great clinical studies that have enabled European and North-American societies to issues recommendations. The observance of the pharmacological and non-pharmacological treatments requires the education of patients and their family following guidelines that have been clearly defined by the European Society of Cardiology. This education, in which the technic of communication is very important, is common to a lot of chronic diseases and requires adequate material and human resources in order to have an optimal quality of treatment. In a society in which spending is on rise, getting such resources is not easy. However, putting in common resources of several departments can be a good solution. The experience of the Hospital Center of Douai (France) lead to the creation of a Transversal Education Unit at the end of the year 2003. This unit centralizes the efforts of several departments of care like pneumology, pediatrics, diabetology, nutrition and cardiology and allows patients suffering from co-morbidities to have access to various programs of this unit.

[Colonic stenosis following necrotizing enterocolitis in newborn infants. Apropos of 3 cases]

Three cases of double left colic stenosis revealed at one month of age by subobstruction are reported. Recovery was obtained by surgery. The evolution of radiological data in one case, and of histological changes observed on the resected sigmoid colon in the two other cases favor the assumption that cicatricial stenosis occurred likewise. These cases also confirm the existence of a benign expression of necrotising enterocolitis, most common with a colonic localization. Such stenosis due to submucous connective sclerosis strengthens the hypothesis that a transitory mesenteric ischemia is responsible for the necrotizing enterocolitis in newborns.