GPs are being urged to have a low threshold for treating elevated blood pressure and dyslipidaemia in teenagers with type 2 diabetes because of the risk of severe microvascular complications.

Leading endocrinologist Professor Jonathan Shaw says family doctors can be crucial to optimising therapy adherence and lifestyle changes for these teens who face aggressive disease.

“Youth-onset type 2 diabetes has very poor outcomes, high rates of complications, difficult to control blood sugar and blood pressure, and progression of complications into early adulthood,” said Professor Shaw, deputy director of the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne.

“For reasons that are unclear, there is possibly a more aggressive metabolic phenotype where the diabetes is just inherently more difficult to control.”