Global Diabetes Prevalence Higher Than Expected

The incidence of diabetes has risen or remained unchanged in virtually every part of the world over the last three decades, affecting almost 350 million people by 2008.

Researchers from Imperial College London (ICL; United Kingdom), the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH; Cambridge, MA, USA), the World Health Organization (WHO; Geneva, Switzerlandt), and a number of other institutions collated and analyzed health examination surveys and epidemiological studies representing 370 country-years to identify trends in diabetes progress. The study included blood sugar measurements from 2.7 million participants aged 25 years or more across the world, and used advanced statistical methods for analyzing data.

The researchers found that between 1980 and 2008, the number of adults with diabetes rose from 153 million to 347 million; 70% of the rise was due to population growth and aging, with the other 30% due to higher prevalence. The proportion of adults with diabetes rose to 9.85% of men and 9.2% of women in 2008, compared with 8.3% of men and 7.5% of women in 1980. The estimated number of diabetics was considerably higher than a previous study in 2009, which put the number worldwide at 285 million.

The average fasting sugar rose from 5.3 mmol/L in men, and 5.2 mmol/L in women in 1980 to 5.5 mmol/L in men and 5.4 mmol/L in women in 2008, even after accounting for age differences over time. The study also found that diabetes rose most dramatically in Pacific Island nations, which now have the highest diabetes levels in the world. In the Marshall Islands, for example, one in three women and one in four men have diabetes. Glucose and diabetes were also particularly high in south Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, Central Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East. The region with the lowest glucose levels was sub-Saharan Africa, followed by east and Southeast Asia. The study was published early online on June 25, 2011, in the Lancet.

"Diabetes is one of the biggest causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Our study has shown that diabetes is becoming more common almost everywhere in the world," said lead author Professor Majid Ezzati, PhD, from the school of public health at ICL. "This is in contrast to blood pressure and cholesterol, which have both fallen in many regions. Diabetes is much harder to prevent and treat than these other conditions."

"Unless we develop better programs for detecting people with elevated blood sugar and helping them to improve their diet and physical activity and control their weight, diabetes will inevitably continue to impose a major burden on health systems around the world," added study coauthor Goodarz Danaei, MD, of the HSPS.

Related Links:
Imperial College London
Harvard School of Public Health
World Health Organization