Diabetes May Be Even Bigger Threat Than Feared

Canadian survey finds 2005 rates surpassed levels predicted for 2030

By Amanda Gardner
HealthDay Reporter

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THURSDAY, March 1 (HealthDay News) -- By last year, the number of people with diabetes in Ontario, Canada, had already surpassed the rate predicted for 2030 by the World Health Organization.

The news is bad enough for Canada, but augurs even more ill for the world, which can now expect many more people to succumb to this chronic disease than originally anticipated, researchers report.

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Even so, the finding did not come as a shock to many.

"I regrettably have to confess that this did not surprise me," said Dr. Larry Deeb, president of medicine and science at the American Diabetes Association. "Every estimate I have ever seen for prevalence has been surpassed the next time you get a chance to look. It's quite frightening."

The question is how to prepare for the challenge.

"Our paper indicates that the magnitude of the problem is such that our health-care systems across the world are going to have an increasingly difficult time managing the ongoing increase in diabetes," said Dr. Lorraine Lipscombe, lead author of the study, and a research fellow at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences in Toronto. "We really have to start adopting more aggressive prevention approaches, otherwise, we will see rates continue to increase. and it will be unmanageable."

Type 2 diabetes, a condition in which the body either doesn't produce enough insulin or the cells ignore the insulin, is one of the most costly and burdensome disease of the day. Left untreated, it can result in heart disease, blindness, amputations as well as nerve and kidney damage.

According to the latest World Health Organization (WHO) estimates, the number of people worldwide with diabetes climbed from 30 million in 1985 to 171 million in 2000. Some 4 percent to 6 percent of adults aged 20 and over are now affected. Developed nations tend to have a higher prevalence, but developing nations are fast catching up.

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