China deals largest diabetes epidemic

China is now dealing with its largest diabetes epidemic.

According to a study conducted by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), a survey of adults in China on 2013 found that the estimated overall prevalence of diabetes was about 11 percent and that of prediabetes was nearly 36 percent.

Diabetes is a disease in which the blood glucose, or blood sugar, levels are too high. Insulin, on the other hand, is a hormone that helps bring the glucose into the cells to give them energy. With type 1 diabetes, your body does not make insulin while with type 2 diabetes, the body does not make or use insulin well and is the more common type of diabetes. Without enough insulin, the glucose stays in the blood. But having prediabetes puts you at a higher risk of getting type 2 diabetes. Prediabetes means that the blood sugar is higher than normal but not high enough to be called diabetes.

Symptoms of diabetes

(Photo Courtesy: Mikael Hräggström)

Linhong Wang, Ph.D., of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention and Yonghua Hu, M.D., of Peking University in Beijing, and their colleagues analyzed the data from a survey that was conducted last 2013 in mainland China. The study included 170,287 participants. Fasting plasma glucose and hemoglobin A1c levels were measured for all participants. Diabetes and prediabetes were defined according to the 2010 American Diabetes Association criteria and was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).