Reading, math scores no different for children with T1DM

(HealthDay)—Standardized reading and mathematics scores do not differ significantly for public schoolchildren with and without type 1 diabetes, according to a study published in the Feb. 5 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Niels Skipper, Ph.D., from Aarhus University in Denmark, and colleagues conducted a population-based retrospective cohort study involving Danish public schoolchildren attending grades 2, 3, 4, 6, and 8. Test scores were obtained in math and in reading for 631,620 public schoolchildren.

Overall, 2,031 children had a confirmed diagnosis of type 1 diabetes. The researchers observed no significant differences in test scores for children with type 1 diabetes and those without diabetes (mean, 56.56 versus 56.11; difference, 0.45; 95 percent confidence interval, −0.31 to 1.22). The estimated difference in test scores for children with versus children without type 1 diabetes was 0.24 (95 percent confidence interval, −0.90 to 1.39) in a model with adjustment for grade test, topic, and year and 0.45 (95 percent confidence interval, −0.8 to 1.49) with additional adjustment for socioeconomic status.

"It is possible that advances in treatment modalities over recent decades (64 percent of children with diabetes in this study used an insulin pump) have improved not only gaps in mortality and morbidity between individuals with diabetes and the overall population but also have improved gaps in school performance," the authors write.