Link between air pollution in childhood and diabetes

A new study in the US has found that children exposed to air pollution from burning fossil fuels and car exhausts can have an increased risk of developing diabetes and obesity, it has emerged.
Scientists at Ohio State University revealed that an exposure to such air pollutants can lead to weight gain in children that have been raised in urban areas, and that the pollutants could also cause an increase in insulin resistance, potentially leading to the development of type 2 diabetes .
The study, published in the journal Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology, compared pollution levels in baby mice when they were exposed to similar levels of microscopic pollution particles found in cities, with a set of mice that received normal filtered air, with both groups receiving either a normal diet or a high-fat diet .
Those mice on a high-fat diet added more weight while the mice on a normal diet who were exposed to the atmospheric pollutants experienced heightened levels of both blood sugar and insulin resistance, and increased weight gain. However, those mice on a high-fat diet and who were exposed to the pollutants did not gain any more weight than those on a high-fat diet who were breathing normal air.
Those mice on a normal diet that breathed in the toxic air showed higher levels of body fat, which implies that the exposure to pollutants had triggered the weight gain.