A Study of Serum Betatrophin levels in Children with Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus

Introduction: Diabetes is reaching an epidemic stage worldwide with International Diabetes Federation 
(IDF) estimating that around 415 million adults are diabetic, and this number will increase to 
approximately 640 million by the year 2040. Aim of the work: The aim of this study were to evaluate the 
levels of betatrophin in children with T1D, and to study their correlations with different clinical and 
laboratory parameters. Patients and methods: This study was conducted upon 90 children who were 
randomly selected ; 60 children with Type 1 Diabetes (T1D) who had regular follow up in the pediatric 
endocrinology outpatients’ Clinic, Maternity and Children University Hospital . Another 30 children were 
taken as a control group apparently healthy age and sex matched to the diabetic group. The study was 
conducted during the period from December 2016 to May 2017. Results: Diabetic groups had higher 
levels of betatrophin than the control. On the other hand ,the newly diagnosed diabetic children had 
significantly higher level of betatrophin than long standing diabetics and the control groups where (p 
=0.001) for both. The long standing T1D children had higher levels of lipid profile (TC, LDL, TG), ACR 
and lower level of LDL than the newly diagnosed and the control groups. Conclusion: Our study found 
increasing of serum betatrophin levels in newly diagnosed as well as in the long standing diabetic 
children, which reflects that there is already a potential stimulus for beta cell proliferation present in type 
1 diabetes. In addition, there were differences between the newly diagnosed and the long standing 
diabetic children as regard serum betatrophin levels which had a significant positive moderate 
correlations with HbA1c,TG levels and a significant fair correlations with group I and a significant 
strong positive correlation with HbA1c levels in group II. This results may suggest that the duration of 
T1D affects the betatrophin levels.