Catherine Jackson
Faculty Sponsor: Dr. Shyam Gour Suresh
In 2001, T.J Wilkin proposed the Accelerator Theory saying that increased weight does not only increase risk of having Type 1 diabetes but accelerates the process and is the reason for the increase in Type 1 diabetes diagnoses among increasingly younger children. This paper explores the validity of the Accelerator Hypothesis by testing the relationship between BMI standard deviation score and the age of diagnosis of Type 1 diabetes patients in South Africa. The data consists of information from 265 patients diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes from 2009 to 2018. The results indicate there is an inverse relationship between BMI standard deviation score and age of diagnosis.