Diabetes On Rise As Obesity Rises

With obesity on the rise, it is easy to see how related conditions and diseases are on the rise as well.
Researchers of a new study looked at the rates of changes in diabetes in the United States over the last 20 years. The study found that the rates have increased and the condition affects more than 20 million adults in the US.
"There has been a staggering increase in the prevalence of obesity over the past 30 years in the United States," said the authors of the study, led by Elizabeth Selvin, PhD., MPH, of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland.
The goal of the new study was to determine how the rates of diabetes, often tied to obesity, has changed over the last several decades.
Dr. Selvin and her team in particular looked at how diabetes is defined by hemoglobin A1C, or HbA1C. This blood test for diabetes gives information on the patient's blood sugar levels in the past three months.
Researchers used the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) from the years 1988 to 1994 and 1999 to 2010 with 43,439 overall participants aged 20 years and older. The survey included data on results from blood tests, previous conditions, and demographic information.
Using the HbA1C levels, Dr. Selvin and her team looked for cases of undiagnosed diabetes and prediabetes. In those who had already been diagnosed with diabetes, researchers looked at control of their condition.
Researchers found that total diabetes cases increased 6.2 percent from 1988 to 1994, 8.8 percent from 1999 to 2010, and 9.9 percent from 2005 to 2010. From this data they deduced that 21 million people in the United States in 2010 over the age of 20 had diabetes.
Even though the total number of diabetes cases increased during the study period, the number of undiagnosed cases show little change. Dr. Selvin estimated that between 1988 and 1994 16 percent of diabetes cases were undiagnosed, but dropped to 11 percent of cases between 2005 and 2010.
Prediabetes cases accounted for 5.8 percent of participants between 1988 and 1994 and increased to 11.9 percent from 1999 to 2010 and 12.4 percent from 2005 to 2010.
In general, control of the condition increased from 50.9 percent from 1988 to 1994 to 58.8 percent from 2005 to 2010. However, certain ethnic groups like non-Hispanic blacks and Mexican Americans had declining rates of control.
And as expected researchers found that obesity levels of participants rose over the study time period. Study authors concluded that, "the increases in diabetes cases over the past 2 decades were largely explained by increases in diabetes."
Participants in Dr. Selvin's study self-reported if they had the condition and the research looked at just one test of HbA1C levels. Further research would be needed to confirm findings.
Reference: Huffington Post
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