Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
The incidence and prevalence rates of diabetes in the US may be leveling off after doubling between 1990 and 2008, researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
Linda Geiss of the CDC’s Atlanta chapter and her colleagues reviewed data from 1980 through 2012 for nearly 665,000 adults between the ages of 20 and 79, and used that information to determine the annual percentage change in rates of the prevalence and incidence of diagnosed diabetes (type 1 and type 2 combined).
According to USA Today’s Kim Painter, a total of 8.3 percent of all adults had been diagnosed with diabetes as of 2012. However, the rates at which new diagnoses are accumulating and the overall number of cases rising have slowed in recent years – findings that the study co-author and CDC diabetes expert Dr. Ann Albright called surprising and encouraging.
The researchers believe that the trend could be linked to a recent slowing in obesity rates, explained MedPage Today staff writer Kristina Fiore. However, the news wasn’t all good, as the researchers found that incidences continue to grow in the Hispanic and black populations, and that prevalence rates were still rising among those with high school education or less, she added.
In addition to the obesity epidemic, the aging of the population and the growing number of at-risk populations were also found to play a role in the doubling disease rates experienced between 1990 and 2008, Betsy McKay of the Wall Street Journal explained.
The disease “has become a major driver of health-care expenditures in the U.S., accounting for an estimated $245 billion in direct and indirect medical costs in 2012, the most recent year available,” she added. Dr. Albright told McKay that while the numbers were encouraging, the number of people with diabetes was still on the rise – even though the rates are leveling off – and that it was too early to say that the tide had turned in regards to the disease.
In a statement, the study authors reported that diabetes prevalence per 100 persons was 3.5 in 1990, 7.9 in 2008, and 8.3 in 2012. The incidence per 1,000 persons was 3.2 in 1990, 8.8 in 2008, and 7.1 in 2012. Both prevalence and incidence increased sharply from 1990 through 2008 (4.5 percent for prevalence, 4.7 percent for incidence) before leveling off with no significant change from 2008 through 2012, they added.
“The report reflects only diagnosed cases,” Painter said. “A previous CDC report said 8 million of the nation’s 29 million people with diabetes have not been diagnosed. An additional 86 million adults are thought to have pre-diabetes – blood sugar levels high enough to be worrisome but not high enough to be called diabetes. Together, those groups add up to about half of US adults.”
Robert Ratner, chief scientific and medical officer of the American Diabetes Association, told USA Today that the findings of the new study should be interpreted “with caution” and that some other research has suggested that the diabetes epidemic is not slowing down at all. Regardless, Ratner added that slowing down the incidence and prevalence of the disease was not enough. “We need to start preventing diabetes,” he said. We need to stop it.”
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