Almost half of 45-year-olds will develop pre-diabetes, an elevated blood-sugar level that often precedes diabetes, according to a large Dutch study using population estimates.
“We have known this from previous studies, but what this study adds is a method of communicating risk in a better way — a person’s lifetime risk of developing diabetes,” said Kamlesh Khunti of Britain’s Leicester General Hospital, who co-authored an editorial accompanying the new results.
One in three healthy 45-year-olds will develop diabetes at some point, Khunti said.
Researchers from Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam and the Harvard School of Public Health used long-term data on about 10,000 adults in the Netherlands, including medical records, hospital discharge letters, pharmacy dispensing data and fasting blood sugar measurements.
Over about 15 years, 1,148 people developed elevated blood-sugar levels, 828 developed diabetes and 237 started taking insulin to control their diabetes.
The study team translated these results into population risk levels at age 45 and found that about half of people would develop pre-diabetic blood-sugar levels before their death, 30 percent would develop full-blown diabetes and 9 percent would start taking insulin.
About three-quarters of those with elevated blood sugar at age 45 would go on to develop diabetes, and half of those who already had diabetes would start taking insulin, they report in the Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology.
Higher body mass index or waist circumference increased these risks further.
Although elevated blood sugar is common, estimates of how many people will develop it had not been previously published, the study authors note. Based on these results, half of the population with normal blood sugar will develop pre-diabetic levels and may qualify for preventive lifestyle changes or medications to reduce that risk.
All people should maintain healthful diet and exercise patterns to reduce their diabetes risk, Khunti said.“People should know their risk, and if they are at higher risk, then they should have a more intensive method of reducing future diabetes risk,” he said.
