The number of children getting Type 2 diabetes has jumped 15-fold since 1990 due to obesity, poor nutrition and lack of exercise, a study published on Wednesday said.

And Canada is one of the global hot spots for the trend, along with New York, Taiwan and New Zealand, the report in the May issue of the Journal of Pediatrics said.

The report's authors, Dr. Orit Pinhas-Hamiel of Sheba Medical Center in Israel and Dr. Philip Zeitler of the University of Colorado, stressed that health officials and educators must urgently develop strategies to reverse the sedentary lifestyles spreading the disease.

Inactivity is one cause behind high rates of Type 2 diabetes among youth, report says.(CP photo)

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The report reviewed published research on childhood and teenage diabetes between 1978 and 2004.

It found that of new cases of diabetes among children and teenagers in North American First Nations communities by 1990, three per cent were Type 2 diabetes. The rate has since ballooned to 45 per cent.

The authors found that the overall rate of new cases among First Nations Americans classified as Type 2 diabetes was 70 per cent.

The Pima Indians in Central Arizona have the world's highest recorded rate of Type 2 diabetes in adults – 5.1 per cent of teenagers aged 15 to 19 – besides high rates of obesity. The rate for Canada's Ojibwa-Cree is pegged at 3.5 per cent for the same age group.

There is a close tie between the rate of Type 2 diabetes among adults in a specific population and the appearance of it in children and adolescents, the authors wrote.

But the disease rate is not limited to First Nations communities. It's a global trend, said the report, noting 80 per cent of new cases of childhood diabetes in Japan are Type 2.

"It is not limited to certain ethnic groups, nor to particular regions, but has now become universal," the authors wrote.

And they said that as many as half the young people with disease may not be aware of it, which could seriously damage their heart and kidneys.

Diabetes is a leading cause of heart disease, kidney failure, blindness and amputation. It kills more than 40,000 people a year in Canada.

Type 2 diabetes was originally thought to be confined to adults. It was not as common as Type 1 among young people.

In Type 2, weight gain, poor nutrition and lack of exercise reduce the ability of insulin manufactured by the body to control levels of sugar, producing a condition called insulin resistance.

"Initially, the body compensates for the resistance by increasing production. However, over time the ability of the pancreas to increase production doesn't keep up and blood sugar begins to rise, leading eventually to Type 2 diabetes," the authors wrote.

In Type 1 diabetes, insulin production is eliminated, but doctors don't know exactly why. People who have it inject insulin.

Not all Type 2 sufferers inject insulin if they can control their blood sugar with other drugs and a healthy lifestyle.