Nutritional influences on pancreatic development and potential links with non-insulin-dependent diabetes

Abstract

hypertension and myocardial infarction. Diabetes afflicts the less privileged and deprived in a society (King & Rewers, 1993). Immigrants and specific populations such as Ethiopian Jews immigrating to Israel also have a high prevalence (Cohen et al. 1988). The disease and its complications run in families, often on the mother’s side (Liao et al. 1993; Mitchell et al. 1993). Impaired glucose tolerance is strikingly more common in women than men. Between 21 and 39 years of age, 11-20% of many populations worldwide may be afflicted by impaired glucose tolerance. In some populations, such as female Muslim Asian Indians it may reach 32% (King & Rewers, 1993). Population studies have indicated that progeny weighing less than 2.5 kg at birth and 8 kg at 1 year are afflicted with diabetes and cardiovascular diseases in more than 45% of the individuals reaching the age of 64 years (Hales et al. 1991). Recent data indicate also that young children born in underprivileged areas where low birth weight is endemic have high cholesterol and blood sugar levels, as well as abnormal insulin levels and hypertension (King et al. 1990). These abnormal biological features are not an acquisition of adult age because they may be present already at 3 years of age (The Bogalusa Heart Study, 1987). The yardstick frequently used to evaluate mothers’ health and its influence on the neonate is to record birthweight and other fetal variables which have been correlated with later degenerative diseases in the progeny (Barker, 1992). The foregoing implies that the metabolic and vascular anomalies leading to chronic ailments such as diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular diseases originate early in life and are initiated, in all likelihood, in utero. The