The EarlyBird study at the Peninsula Medical School in Plymouth has been running since 2001 and is the only project of its kind worldwide to take annual blood tests from healthy children, starting at age five, to identify links between weight and metabolic changes.
For the past six years it has monitored 300 children using six-monthly health checks in a bid to discover what causes changes that lead to Type 2 diabetes. Findings include the fact that girls are at greater risk of developing obesity-related diabetes than boys.
Dr Linda Voss, study co-ordinator, said the research team had managed to raise 1.2m over the past six years, but a further 1m is needed to see the project through.
'It's going really well and we don't want to see it stop,' she said. 'We are hoping people will donate.'
Elsewhere, another study has charted the rise in the number of overweight young children, including infants. Researchers for Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care examined more than 120,000 children aged under six in Massachusetts over 22 years. During that time the number of overweight infants increased by 74 per cent.
'These results show that efforts to prevent obesity must start at the earliest stages of human development, even before birth,' said study author Matthew Gillman.
For more information see www.earlybirddiabetestrust.org or phone 01752 792552.
