Incidence of Type 1 Diabetes among Children and Adolescents in Italy between 2009 and 2013: The Role of a Regional Childhood Diabetes Registry

Abstract EN

Background.

Surveillance represents a key strategy to control type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM).

In Italy, national data are missing.

This study aimed at evaluating the incidence of T1DM in subjects <18 year olds in Apulia (a large southeastern region, about 4,000,000 inhabitants) and assessing the sensitivity of the regional Registry of Childhood-Onset Diabetes (RCOD) in the 2009–2013 period.

Methods.

We performed a retrospective study matching records from regional Hospital Discharge Registry (HDR), User Fee Exempt Registry (UFER), and Drugs Prescription Registry (DPR) and calculated T1DM incidence; completeness of each data source was also estimated.

In order to assess the RCOD sensitivity we compared cases from the registry to those extracted from HDR-UFER-DPR matching.

Results.

During 2009–2013, a total of 917 cases (about 184/year) in at least one of the three sources and an annual incidence of 25.2 per 100,000 were recorded, lower in infant, increasing with age and peaked in 5- to 9-year-olds.

The completeness of DPR was 78.7%, higher than that of UFER (64.3%) and of HDR (59.6%).

The RCOD’s sensitivity was 39.05% (360/922; 95% CI: 34.01%–44.09%).

Conclusions.

Apulia appeared as a high-incidence region.

A full, active involvement of physicians working in paediatric diabetes clinics would be desirable to improve the RCOD performance.