38th Annual Meeting of EASD 2002

Background and Aims: During the last decade several studies reported an increase in the incidence of type I diabetes mellitus (TlDM). Such increase varies among the European countries in both age groups and gender. Furthermore, in some countries a rising incidence of TI DM has been reported in children <5 years. We aimed to describe the incidence of childhood-onset TI DM in Italy according to time variability, age and regional differences. Materials and Methods: Registry for type I Diabetes mellitus in Italy (RIOI), was established in 1997 aiming to co-ordinate the pre-existing registries and to promote new registries. This report is based on 3606 cases aged 0-14 years, registered during 1990-1999 by 9 registries, covering an Italian population of about 35% and located in 4 distinct geographic macroareas: north (Liguria region, Torino and Pavia provinces), central (Marche, Umbria, Lazio regions and Firenze province), south (Campania region) and insular areas (Sardegna region). Multiple sources of ascertainment were used to validate the completeness of registration by the capture-recapture method. The change in incidence during the study period was analysed by fitting the Poisson regression models to the number of cases with resident population being the normalising constant. Results: The standardised average incidence rates (cases per 100000 person-years) in the 4 macro-areas were: 11.3 (95% CI 10.4-12.3) in north, 9.3 (95% CI 8.8-9.9) in central, 6.2 (95% CI 5.8-6.7) in south, and 36.9 (95% CI 34.7-39.3) in insular areas. A significant higher incidence rate was observed in Sardinian boys respect to girls, while no differences between sexes were found in the other areas. Moreover there were significant differences among age groups within each area. Throughout the IO-year study period, the overall incidence of diabetes showed an average increase of 3.6% (p