Children with increased growth in the first three years of life may be more likely to become diabetic in childhood, suggests new research.

Type-1 diabetes is becoming more common in affluent countries where, it is thought, better nutrition among children makes them grow more quickly which can affect the rate of insulin secretions.

Dutch reseachers Jan Bruining and colleagues from Sophia Children's Hospital, Rotterdam, found that children who went on to become diabetic often had normal height and weight shortly after birth but went on to become overweight in the first year compared with siblings and other children.

In the second and third years of life, pre-diabetic children were taller than other children but by the third year growth rates were normal.

Writing in the Lancet medical journal, the researchers said the heavier and taller children produced immune system antibodies against enzymes in the pancreas, where insulin, needed by the body to prevent diabetes, is produced.