April 5 (Reuters) – The more common type of diabetes, type 2
diabetes, is rising sharply in China, growing by 30 percent in
just seven years, according to a survey of thousands of Shanghai
residents.
The study, published in the journal Diabetes Care, shows
that the curse of affluence appears to be affecting China as it
has many other developing countries – and it has come on quite
rapidly, researchers said.
“Unlike the gradual transition in most Western countries,
these changes in China have occurred over a very short time,”
wrote lead researcher Rui Li, at the Shanghai Municipal center
for Disease Control and Prevention.
People with type 2 diabetes have trouble processing sugar in
their blood, but do not generally require insulin to manage the
condition. As countries become more wealthy, lifestyle factors
associated with type 2 diabetes – such as weight gain, less
healthy diets and less physical activity – tend to become more
common.
The research team interviewed more than 12,000 people in
2002 and 2003, asking whether they’d been diagnosed with type 2
diabetes. They also screened people for diabetes who had not
been diagnosed before.
At that time, they found that 9.7 percent of people had
diabetes.
In 2009, they surveyed about 7,400 people again and found
that 12.6 percent had the disease. The spike was even more
dramatic among the rural residents in the study, going from 6.1
percent to 9.8 percent, a 60 percent increase.
“That’s a remarkable increase in seven years,” said Jeffrey
Koplan, the vice president for global health at Emory
University, who did not take part in the study.
The overall prevalence of diabetes was higher among men and
in urban residents in both surveys, but the increase was more
noted among rural residents and appeared more rapid in “younger
birth cohorts,” the authors wrote.
The study did not pinpoint the causes of the rise in
diabetes, and Koplan said he could only speculate on what’s to
blame, though it has been well documented that people are
getting wealthier and heavier in China. In addition, diets are
including more unsaturated fat.
He added that people are also becoming more dependent on
cars and less inclined to walk or ride a bike.
“All these factors would help contributed to having an
increased prevalence in type 2 diabetes,” Koplan said.
The authors wrote in their study that an aging population in
China likely explains some of their findings. Older people are
more likely to develop type 2 diabetes, and the researchers
noted that 20 percent of Shanghai residents are over 60, with
that proportion increasing.
Koplan said that many countries have programs to promote
healthy lifestyles and prevent type 2 diabetes, but as of yet
there’s “not a proven, documented intervention that can reverse
this epidemic of obesity and epidemic of type 2 diabetes.”
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/Hh4wij
(Reporting from New York by Kerry Grens at Reuters Health;
editing by Elaine Lies)
