Diabetes in India: becoming a killer disease of the poor

As India becomes more prosperous, the prevalence of diabetes is undergoing a demographic transformation, shifting from largely afflicting the affluent to increasingly burdening the poor and middle income population.according to a new study.Diabetes has long been a disease of affluence but small regional studies in recent years have indicated that, in India, it has been slowly spreading among lower income groups. However, an ongoing national survey of diabetes called the Indian Council of Medical Research – India Diabetes or simply ICMR-INDIAB study finds that many more people from middle-income and poor communities are becoming diabetic.

An ongoing government funded research project to understand the prevalence pattern of diabetes across states indicates that the disease is disproportionately catching up with the urban poor in the country s developed states.

The findings of the Indian Council of Medical Research-INdia DIABetes study is the largest national representative of diabetes and includes data from more than 57,000 people across 15 states, both in rural and urban areas. The study represents 363·7 million people or 51% of India’s adult population, published in the international medical journal Lancet recently, suggests that the urban areas of more affluent states have transitioned further along the diabetes epidemic. Less affluent individuals have a higher prevalence of diabetes than their more affluent counterparts in rich states.For this study, the researchers considered each person’s bodyweight, height, waist circumference and blood pressure and used glucose tolerance tests to diagnose diabetes and pre-diabetes.

The overall prevalence of prediabetes in all 15 states was 10.3 per cent. The prevalence of prediabetes varied from 6 per cent in Mizoram to 14.7 per cent in Tripura, and the prevalence of impaired fasting glucose was generally higher than the prevalence of impaired glucose tolerance. Age, male sex, obesity, hypertension, and family history were independent risk factors for diabetes in both urban and rural areas, the study said.

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