The prevalence of type 1 diabetes in U.S. adolescents rose by 23% between 2001 and 2009, according to University of Colorado researchers.
The journal Pediatrics just recently published an article stating that the incidence of diabetes and prediabetes in U.S. adolescents increased from 9% in 1999 to 23% in 2008. From that report, however, I couldn’t tell how much of the increase was type 1 versus type 2.
No one knows why type 1 diabetes in youths is increasing. The rise in type 2 diabetes is likely related to higher obesity rates.
Diabetic Mediterranean Diet 
Are you sure the second word in this article should not be “incidence,” instead of prevalence?
Wouldn’t it be great if someone did a study on the life duration (life expectancy, more or less) of those with DM1? The little evidence available suggests a minimum 15-year reduction in life-span, but I believe this figure uses both DM1 and DM2 individuals. Recently, also without distinguishing between DM1 and DM2 in young people, a study reported that many of these people, diagnosed at a young age, will have a life-expectancy less long than that of their parents.
Hey, Doc. I think prevalence is right, although I have occasionally confused prevalence and incidence. From Wikipedia: In epidemiology, the prevalence of a health-related state (typically disease, but also other things like smoking or seatbelt use) in a statistical population is defined as the total number of cases of the risk factor in the population at a given time, or the total number of cases in the population, divided by the number of individuals in the population.
It is indeed hard to find reliable figures on life expectancy of type 1 diabetics. I was surprised to learn that Elizabeth Hughes, one of the first in the U.S. to use insulin, lived to be 73.
-Steve