Skip to main content

Childhood High Blood Sugar Can Cause Heart Problems In Young Adults

Medically reviewed by Carmen Pope, BPharm. Last updated on May 7, 2025.

By Dennis Thompson HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, May 7, 2025 -- 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:

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.”

Sources

  • University of Eastern Finland, news release, April 28, 2025

Disclaimer: Statistical data in medical articles provide general trends and do not pertain to individuals. Individual factors can vary greatly. Always seek personalized medical advice for individual healthcare decisions.

© 2025 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Read this next

High Insulin Linked To Irregular Periods

WEDNESDAY, June 4, 2025 — Elevated insulin levels could be causing irregular menstrual bleeding in women, a new study says. Women with excess levels of insulin are three...

Self-Employment Is Good For Heart Health, Especially For Women

TUESDAY, June 3, 2025 — Being your own boss might seem potentially stressful, but self-employed women appear to have better heart health than those toiling for a company, a...

Dr. Robert Jarvik, Inventor of First Human Artificial Heart, Dies at 79

FRIDAY, May 30, 2025 — Dr. Robert Jarvik, the man behind the world’s first permanent artificial heart used in a human, has died.  He was 79, The New York Times...

More news resources

Subscribe to our newsletter

Whatever your topic of interest, subscribe to our newsletters to get the best of Drugs.com in your inbox.