FRIDAY, Dec. 30 (HealthDay News) -- Doctors have long been concerned that increasing rates of childhood obesity could fuel a diabetes epidemic.

Study results have now underscored that fear.

Researchers have found that the length of time a person carries excess weight directly contributes to an increased risk for type 2 diabetes.

In other words, because today's children are expected to receive a larger lifetime "dose" of obesity, their chances of developing diabetes at some point in their lives will be greater.

Dr. John E. Anderson, vice president of medicine and science for the American Diabetes Association, said that the findings reflect what is already happening in society, with more young children and teenagers diagnosed with type 2 diabetes than ever before.

"A disease that used to be confined to older people is creeping into high schools," Anderson said. "At best, this is alarming. This obesity epidemic we have is fueling an epidemic of diabetes in young people."

Obesity among children and adolescents has almost tripled since 1980, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Today, nearly one in five American kids ages 2 to 19 -- or about 12.5 million -- are obese.

Obesity has long been linked with the development of type 2 diabetes, which occurs when the body gradually loses its ability to properly use insulin to convert blood sugar into fuel, a condition known as insulin resistance.

"Extra weight gets in the way of the ability of tissues to absorb insulin and use it to convert glucose," Anderson said. "The more obese you are, the more insulin resistant you can become."

But researchers now are finding that the time spent carrying extra weight matters as much as the amount of extra weight itself.

A research team at the University of Michigan that studied the health records of about 8,000 teens and young adults found that those with a body mass index (BMI) indicating overweight or obesity for a greater length of time had a higher risk for diabetes.

For example, the researchers found that a person who carried a BMI of 35 for 10 years -- a BMI of 30 or above is considered obese -- could be considered to have the equivalent of 100 years of excess BMI.

The findings, published in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, jibe with projections that show diabetes rates exploding as more people spend more of their lives either overweight or obese.

"If you're born in the year 2000 and the current trends continue unchecked, you will have a one in three chance of developing type 2 diabetes," Anderson said. That risk increases for certain ethnic minorities, including African Americans, Native Americans and Hispanics.

Diabetes is a systemic disease, and by its nature can affect almost every part of a person's body. Someone with diabetes has a shorter life expectancy, and on any given day has twice the risk for dying as a person of similar age without diabetes, according to the CDC.

"We worry this will be the first generation of Americans who don't live as long as their parents did," Anderson said.

What can be done to alter the potentially grim outlook? To start losing weight, kids need to adopt a set of healthy living skills that become part of their daily routine, said Sheri Colberg-Ochs, an exercise science professor at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va., who works with the American Diabetes Association.

"It's not just the weight, per se," Colberg-Ochs said. "It's the lifestyle they've developed that caused them to gain the extra weight."

First, kids need to be taught to eat healthy foods and to avoid foods that are fatty, sugar-packed or heavily processed, she said.

"When food is a lot more refined, it's lacking in a lot of vitamins and minerals that are essential to your effective metabolic function," she said. "Kids eat empty calories, and those calories go straight to weight gain."

But they also need to become more physically active, she said. Exercise has been shown to both battle obesity and help better control blood glucose levels in the body.

"Those two things alone would probably solve the problem of childhood obesity, were society to pursue them vigorously," Colberg-Ochs said.

More information

The American Diabetes Association has more on living with diabetes  .

For more on learning to live with diabetes from a young age, check out a companion article that details one woman's story  .

MONDAY, Dec. 5 (HealthDay News) -- When people with type 2 diabetes also struggle with depression, their odds for a third worrisome condition -- dementia -- goes up markedly, a new study suggests.

Specifically, patients with type 2 diabetes are twice as likely to develop dementia three to five years after being diagnosed with depression compared to nondepressed people with diabetes, researchers found.

"We've known for years that diabetes is a risk factor for dementia," explained study lead author Dr. Wayne Katon, a professor and vice chair of the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Washington's School of Public Health in Seattle. "In fact, having diabetes itself probably doubles the risk for dementia," Katon added.

"We've also known that a very common accompanying condition with diabetes is depression," Katon said. "Some 20 percent of diabetics have depression. And now our data suggests that if you do have depression in addition to diabetes, it actually doubles again the already increased risk for dementia that diabetic patients face."

However, the study authors noted that the absolute risk of dementia for any one person with depression and diabetes remains relatively small -- about one in 50.

Katon and his colleagues published their research, which was supported by the U.S. National Institutes of Health-funded Diabetes & Aging Study and the Diabetes Study of Northern California, in the Dec. 5 online edition of Archives of General Psychiatry.

The authors noted that depression and diabetes are among the most prevalent health issues facing American seniors.

What's more, each of the two conditions seem to independently raise the risk for developing the other: Being diabetic bumps up the likelihood of becoming depressed, while being depressed boosts the risk for developing diabetes.

In the new study, the researchers focused on more than 19,000 California residents with diabetes between the ages of 30 and 75.

Nearly one in five of the patients were also deemed to be experiencing "clinically significant" depression, the authors noted.

After monitoring for the onset of dementia over a three- to five-year period, the research team found that just over 2 percent of those who had both diabetes and depression went on to develop one or more forms of dementia, including Alzheimer's disease.

By contrast, just 1 percent of patients who had diabetes alone ended up developing dementia during that period.

But the authors also noted that many of the things that can boost the odds for depression among diabetic patients, such as eating a poor diet, maintaining a sedentary lifestyle and/or smoking, are modifiable behaviors. This means that patients and physicians alike have some clear targets for interventions to lower depression risk, and possibly dementia risk as well.

"So the important thing to focus on here is that there are very effective treatments for depression," said Katon. "And so if you're a diabetic who does have depression it's very important to get it attended to. Just as important as getting your diabetes itself treated."

Dr. Robert Friedland, chair of neurology at the University of Louisville School of Medicine in Louisville, Ky., agreed.

"It is not surprising that they should find a relationship between depression in diabetics and a higher risk for dementia," he said. "But I would point out that although both diabetes and dementia have genetic influences, there are also clear things people can do to lower their risk for both. For example, avoiding obesity by eating a relatively low-fat diet and engaging in regular physical exercise can help to prevent both diabetes and depression. And, therefore, dementia as well."

More information

There's more on the diabetes-depression link at the American Diabetes Association  .

(HealthDay News) -- At some time in their lives, as many as one-third of people with diabetes will develop a skin infection, the American Diabetes Association says.

The ADA says these common bacterial infections may affect diabetics:

• Styes, infection of the eyelid glands.
• Folliculitis, infection of the hair follicle.
• Boils.
• Carbuncles, a type of deep-skin infection.
• Infections of the skin surrounding the nails.