Childrens Hospital Los Angeles, Calif.

— -- The Center for Diabetes and Endocrinology at Childrens Hospital Los AngelesCenter for Diabetes and Endocrinology at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles is involved in critical diabetes research. We have two main foci of our research: the prevention, and the cure of diabetes. Our prevention efforts are in both type 1 and in type 2 diabetes in youth.

We're involved in a large NIH-funded multi-center trial looking for preventive measures for type 1 diabetes in children and adolescents, and in addition, even their adult family members. We've screened in this study over 100,000 people across the country, and we're trying novel agents to see if we can change the course of type 1 diabetes for those who are at risk to develop it or those who have recently developed it. In fact, one of our studies is even looking at newborns, and during pregnancy, the last trimester, whether or not some dietary manipulations can make a big difference in diabetes management and outcome.

In addition, we're looking at whether or not we can prevent type 2 diabetes in a school-based strategy. We're following in part of another large NIH multi-center study, over 6,000 children, who are in middle school -- we're going to follow them from 6th through 8th grade -- and see if we fundamentally change the school environment, whether we can change their risk factors for type 2 diabetes.

We're also involved in the Today Trial, another large NIH-funded multi-center trial, looking to determine the best treatment options for children with type 2 diabetes. And over the last number of years, we've had both a funded study from the American Diabetes Association and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, looking at cardiovascular risk factors in children with type 1 diabetes. Most people with type 1 diabetes die of cardiovascular disease in adulthood. We're trying to determine whether we can do something in our teenagers and our young adults to really change the course of the outcome of type 1 diabetes.

So, we're looking at all aspects in both type 1 and type 2 diabetes in youth, and we're really hoping to make a big difference in how this disease affects our children not only in Los Angeles, in our country, and around the world.

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