HealthDay News
MONDAY, Feb. 6

There's more evidence that being overweight is bad for kids, with a new study finding that obese children are more than twice as likely as normal-weight children to have diabetes.

Researchers at the University of Michigan Health System in Ann Arbor also estimated that 229,000 American children have diabetes, and that a third of those diabetic children are obese. This combination of obesity and diabetes may soon strain the nation's health-care system, the researchers added.

"Among school-aged children, obese children have a greater than twofold chance of having diabetes, compared with children of normal weight," study author Dr. Joyce Lee, of the division of pediatric endocrinology and the Child Health Evaluation Unit, said in a prepared statement.