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Tim Jones MBBS DCH FRACP MD Co-head, Diabetes and Obesity Research Co-head, Diabetes and Obesity Research Areas of research expertise: Diabetes
Type 1 diabetes, one of the common chronic conditions in children and adolescents, is a serious lifelong condition requiring daily treatment with exogenous insulin for survival. Descriptive epidemiology is important for planning of adequate diabetes health-care provision and could provide clues to aetiology. Over the past few decades, standardised diabetes incidence registries have provided a wealth of data from selected countries.
While advancements in the treatment of diabetes continue to rapidly evolve, many of the newer technologies have financial barriers to care, opposing the egalitarian ethos of Banting who sold his patent on insulin for a nominal cost to allow it to be made widely available. Inequity in access to new therapies drives disparity in diabetes burden with potential for these gaps to widen in the future.
In Australia, access to insulin pump therapy for children with type 1 diabetes is predominantly restricted to families with private health insurance. In an attempt to improve equity, additional subsidised pathways exist which provide pumps to families with reduced financial resources. We aimed to describe the outcomes and experiences of families with children commenced on pumps through these subsidised pathways in Western Australia.
Autoantibodies to pancreatic islet antigens identify young children at high risk of type 1 diabetes. On a background of genetic susceptibility, islet autoimmunity is thought to be driven by environmental factors, of which enteric viruses are prime candidates.
Adolescents with Type 1 diabetes (T1D) often need to undertake self-management tasks in public or disclose their diagnosis to others. Therefore, they may be subjected to negative reactions from the public, known as enacted stigma.
Glycemia risk index (GRI) is a novel composite metric assessing overall glycemic risk, accounting for both hypoglycemia and hyperglycemia and weighted toward extremes. Data assessing GRI as an outcome measure in closed-loop studies and its relation with conventional key continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) metrics are limited.
Cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes mellitus are leading contributors to the health inequity experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, and their antecedents can be identified from early childhood. We aimed to establish the quality of available data and the prevalence of cardiometabolic risk markers among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and youths (0-24-year-olds) to inform public health approaches.
We sought research experiences of caregivers and their children were enrolled in the Environmental Determinants of Islet Autoimmunity (ENDIA) study.
Type 1 diabetes is well-recognised as a continuum heralded by the development of islet autoantibodies, progression to islet autoimmunity causing beta cell destruction, culminating in insulin deficiency and clinical disease. Abnormalities of glucose homeostasis are known to exist well before the onset of typical symptoms.