News from the FDA/CDC

Over 45% of American adults have type 2 diabetes mellitus or prediabetes

Publish date: July 20, 2017
By
Richard Franki

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Continued research and education are needed

“Diabetes and prediabetes remain serious threats for more than one-third of Americans – the statistics are staggering,” William T. Cefalu, MD, chief scientific, medical, and mission officer of the American Diabetes Association, said in a written statement.

“We must continue to innovate in scientific research and to translate findings to the clinical level to decrease the prevalence of diabetes. These data clearly confirm it is critical for us to continue to provide the education and support needed to improve health outcomes and decrease the daily burden of diabetes. We must reduce the incidence of diabetes and its enormous costs, including both the financial costs and the human toll of lost quality of life,” he said.


 

More than 114 million American adults have type 2 diabetes mellitus or prediabetes, according to estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

As of 2015, the combined prevalence of diabetes and prediabetes was 45.4% among adults in the United States: 11.5% (30.3 million) have diabetes and 33.9% have prediabetes, representing 84.1 million people who could develop type 2 diabetes within 5 years, the CDC said in the National Diabetes Statistics Report, 2017.

Prevalence of prediabetes and diabetes in adults, 2011-2014
Prevalence rates for both diabetes and prediabetes vary considerable by race/ethnicity, with non-Hispanic blacks having the highest combined rate at 54% (17.7% diabetes and 36.3% prediabetes), followed by non-Hispanic Asians at 51.7% (16% and 35.7%), Hispanics at 48.1% (16.4% and 31.7%), and non-Hispanic whites at 40.8% (9.3% and 40.8%), the CDC reported.

Lack of knowledge about having the disease was common: Almost a quarter (23.8%) of adults with diabetes didn’t know they had it, and the number jumped to 88% for those with prediabetes, based on data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which included a blood test for fasting plasma glucose or hemoglobin A1c.

“More than a third of U.S. adults have prediabetes, and the majority don’t know it. Now, more than ever, we must step up our efforts to reduce the burden of this serious disease,” CDC Director Brenda Fitzgerald, MD, said in a statement.

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