| Diabetes reportedly to double worldwide by 2030
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Diabetes rates will double worldwide by
2030, to 366 million people with the disease, even if the obesity
rate remains stable, an international team of researchers reported
on Monday.
But the rate will go up even higher if, as expected, more and more
people become overweight, eat a "Western diet" and stop
exercising, the researchers said.
"The total number of people with diabetes is projected to
rise from 171 million in 2000 to 366 million in 2030," the
researchers wrote in the latest issue of Diabetes Care, published
by the American Diabetes Association.
Diabetes is a disease in which the body does not produce or properly
use insulin, a hormone needed to convert sugar, starches and other
food into energy.
Sarah Wild of the University of Edinburgh in Britain and colleagues
in Australia, Denmark and Switzerland, looked at type 2 diabetes
figures from around the world, using United Nations data to project
future diabetes rates based on current trends.
"Assuming that age-specific prevalence remains constant, the
number of people with diabetes in the world is expected to approximately
double between 2000 and 2030, based solely upon demographic changes,"
Wild and her colleagues said.
"The greatest relative increases will occur in the Middle
Eastern Crescent, sub-Saharan Africa, and India."
The figures do not include type1, or juvenile, diabetes, which
is an autoimmune disease separate from type 2 diabetes.
"The human and economic costs of this epidemic are enormous,"
Wild and colleagues said, calling for "a concerted, global
initiative" to address the epidemic.
A 2001 study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
projected that 29 million Americans would be diagnosed with diabetes
by 2050. Currently an estimated 16 million Americans have type 2
diabetes.
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