"This transition from managing diabetes with the parents to independent management is a huge issue," said Aaron Kowalski, Ph.D., assistant vice president for glucose control research at the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. As an adolescent with type 1 diabetes, he had experienced this transition firsthand.

Teenagers with diabetes go through the usual stresses and peer pressure of adolescence and might let management of their disease slide, Kowalski said, and this change in priorities in turn puts stress on the parents and on family dynamics.

The majority of teens in the study used insulin pumps, which can administer a continuous amount of insulin, rather than insulin injections from syringes or pens. Hood and Kowalski said that pumps are becoming the more common method of insulin administration in children and people newly diagnosed with diabetes because they are easier to use.

SOURCE Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation