Inheritance of childhood diabetes

In the parents of 250 diabetic children the occurrence of juvenile and maturity onset diabetes was found to be more frequent than in the parents of 230 medical students. Assuming a multifactorial poligeneic heredity, the role of common genes predisposing to diabetes cannot be neglected in the manifestation of the two types of the disease. In the families where juvenile diabetes had occurred, the probability of occurrence of juvenile diabetes is considerably higher than that of maturity onset diabetes. This might be in connection with the fact that the provocative factors are different in juvenile and maturity onset diabetes.