Childhood High Blood Sugar Can Cause Heart Problems In Young Adults

Persistently high blood sugar among teenagers can lead to heart disease by young adulthood, a new study says.

Teenagers had up to three times the risk of developing a heart condition called left ventricular hypertrophy if their blood sugar remained persistently high between ages 17 to 24, researchers reported recently in the journal Diabetes Care.

Teens who had developed insulin resistance also had increased risk of heart disease, researchers said.

“Even healthy-looking adolescents and young adults who are mostly normal weight may be on a path towards cardiovascular diseases, if they have high blood glucose and insulin resistance,” lead researcher Dr. Andrew Agbaje, an associate professor of clinical epidemiology and child health at the University of East Finland, said in a news release.

“Surprisingly, we observed that high blood sugar may aggressively damage females’ hearts five times faster than males’,” he added. “Therefore, special attention should be paid to girls in terms of prevention.”

In left ventricular hypertrophy, the inner walls of the heart grow thicker due to health problems that overwork the heart muscle. This causes the heart to lose pumping power, reducing healthy blood flow.

For the study, researchers tracked nearly 1,600 kids participating in the University of Bristol’s “Children of the 90s” long-term health research project.

As part of the project, the children had their heart health measured at ages 17 and 24, and blood samples analyzed for blood sugar levels and insulin resistance.

The researchers looked at two different cutpoints for high blood glucose — the stricter one of 5.6 mmol/L or greater set by the American Diabetes Association (ADA), and the 6.1 mmol/L or greater cutpoint used by many countries.

The percentage of kids who met the ADA definition of high blood sugar increased fivefold, from around 6% at age 17 to 27% by age 24.

Likewise, the percentage of kids who had high blood sugar under the less stringent cutoff also increased, from about 1% at 17 to just under 6% by 24.

Results showed that:

Persistent high blood sugar levels under the ADA definition increased the risk of left ventricular hypertrophy by 47%.
High blood sugar levels under the looser cutoff caused a threefold increase in the risk of left ventricular hypertrophy.
High blood sugar also decreased heart muscle relaxation, altered normal heart function and increased the pressure of blood flow to the heart.
Persistent insulin resistance was associated with a 10% increased risk of premature heart damage.

Previous studies have focused on the heart health effects in middle age of high blood sugar in childhood, but none looked at the potential effects in young adulthood, researchers said.

It’s known that the younger a person is diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, the more severe and rapidly they will develop complications if their blood sugar isn’t managed, researchers noted.

“In the new study, we observed that two-thirds of the effect of insulin resistance on excessive heart enlargement was explained by increased total body fat,” Agbaje said. “The five-fold increase in the prevalence of prediabetes within 7 years of growth from adolescence to young adulthood underscores the critical importance of lifestyle behavior and dietary habits, especially after adolescents have become independent from their family.”

More information

The American Academy of Pediatrics has more on diabetes in children.

SOURCE: University of Eastern Finland, news release, April 28, 2025

Source: HealthDay