Approximately half of the US adult population has diabetes or is pre-diabetic, although prevalence of the disease appears to be leveling off after decades of increase, researchers said on Tuesday.
Nearly 40 per cent of US adults had pre-diabetes and 12 to 14pc had diabetes between 2011 and 2012, according to new research in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
Among those with diabetes, 36.4pc of cases were undiagnosed. That percentage was higher for Asian-Americans and Latinos at approximately half of all cases.
Diabetes — diagnosed or not — was likely to be highest among Latinos (22.6pc), African-Americans (21.8pc) and Asian-Americans (20.6pc). Prevalence among white participants was 11.3 percent.
Diabetes affected 9.8pc of the population between 1988 and 1994, increased to 10.8pc between 2001 and 2002, and grew again to 12.4pc between 2011 and 2012.
Despite these increases, the researchers said recent growth was slight and could signal a “plateauing of diabetes prevalence” that is “consistent with obesity trends in the United States showing a leveling off around the same period.”
“The current data provide a glimmer of hope”, wrote endocrinologists William Herman and Amy Rothberg, of the University of Michigan, in an accompanying editorial.
“The shift in cultural attitudes toward obesity, the American Medical Association’s (AMA’s) recognition of obesity as a disease, and the increasing focus on societal interventions to address food policy and the built environment” were helping tackle circumstances that contribute to obesity, they said. Diabetes is a serious public health problem in the United States, racking up an estimated $245 billion in health care costs and lost productivity in 2012, the researchers said.
