WASHINGTON, Sept 4 – Diabetes in China may have reached an alert level with one in 10 adults having the disease while most patients are unaware of their condition, Xinhua news agency reported.
Researchers warned in the Journal of the American Medical Association that China could face a major epidemic of diabetes-related complications, including cardiovascular disease, stroke and chronic kidney disease in the near future without an effective national intervention.
Nearly 12 percent of Chinese adults have diabetes while about 50 percent are at the risk of developing it — which means up to 113.9 million Chinese adults are diabetic and another 493.4 million are estimated to be pre-diabetic.
“The prevalence of diabetes in the Chinese adult population has surpassed that of India and is now close to that of the U.S.,” said lead researcher Guang Ning, vice president of Ruijin Hospital affiliated with the Shanghai Jiaotong University Medical School.
“Although it is not appropriate to compare them in such a simple way, China is now home to the largest diabetes population in the world,” Ning said.
In a study of more than 98,000 adults in 2010, Ning and his team from the China Noncommunicable Disease Surveillance Group found prevalence of diabetes among Chinese men was 12.1 percent and 11.0 percent among women with the disease more common among urban residents than rural residents in both genders.
Diabetes prevalence also increased with age in both men and women, and men younger than 50 years had a higher prevalence whereas women older than 60 years had a higher prevalence.
The estimated prevalence of prediabetes was 50.1 percent in Chinese adults with 52.1 percent in men and 48.1 percent in women. Rural residents had slightly higher prevalence of prediabetes than did urban residents especially in men.
The researchers also found that the proportion of patients with diabetes who were aware of their condition was 30.1 percent among the Chinese general population.
Only 25.8 percent of overall patients with diabetes were treated for this condition, and 39.7 percent of those treated had adequate glycemic control, they said.
“As the country’s economy expanded quickly over the last three decades, the standards of living and lifestyles of ordinary Chinese have changed substantially,” Ning said.
“With increased high-calorie, highfat, high-sugar, and high-sodium diets, decreased physical activity and more sedentary lifestyles, all factors that could lead to weight gain, diabetes and other chronic diseases are now reaching epidemic proportions in China,” he said.
A 2007 national survey found the prevalence of diabetes was 9.7 percent, representing an estimated 92.4 million adults in China with diabetes.
– BERNAMA
