U.S. Predicts Diabetes Epidemic to Go On Unchecked

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Saaddine warned that the U.S. health-care system will need to take steps to be prepared for this dramatic increase in cases of diabetic retinopathy. "We need to work on better disease management, because diabetic retinopathy happens due to poor disease management," she said.

In a third presentation, Catherine C. Cowie, an epidemiologist with the U.S. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, collected data on 5,140 people who had had their hearing tested during 1999-2004 as part of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

Cowie's team found that among the 399 people with diabetes, 31.6 percent had low-frequency hearing impairment, compared with 14.5 percent of the 4,741 non-diabetics. For higher frequencies, 56.8 percent of diabetics had impaired hearing, compared with 35.8 percent of non-diabetics.

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"The high prevalence of this disability among those with diabetes based on national data indicates that screening diabetic patients for hearing impairment is likely to yield a high number of these diagnoses," the study authors wrote. "The potential mechanisms underlying the association of diabetes and hearing impairment need explanation," they concluded.

Two additional presentations Saturday are to deal with undiagnosed diabetes and the perception of diabetes risk among those without the disease.

In one presentation, Xuanping Zhang, a health scientist with the CDC's Division of Diabetes Translation, and colleagues found that an estimated 2.8 percent of people in the United States have diabetes but don't know it.

"There is a relationship between the detection and access to health care," Zhang said. "Not having insurance makes it more difficult for patients to access preventive care."

Using data from the 1999-2004 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, Zhang's group found that lack of access to health care due to lack of health insurance, and not seeking health care, were the primary reasons why these diabetes cases were missed.

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