Bits from above link...Crikey look at these numbers for the USA alone. PEOPLE WITH pre-diabetes can take steps to reduce their risks, but most people with it don’t know they have it,” Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said in a press conference announcing the newly termed condition “pre-diabetes” and screening guidelines.
Thompson also announced an updated estimate of the U.S. diabetes epidemic. Some 17 million Americans have diabetes, 8 percent more than previously thought, according to new census data.
Doctors have long known that people with a condition called “impaired glucose tolerance” characterized by blood sugar gradually rising are at high risk for diabetes. The government renamed the condition “pre-diabetes” to make it easier for people to understand.
Most people with blood glucose levels in the pre-diabetes range will develop type 2 diabetes over the next decade unless they take action to reduce their risk, said Dr. Francine Kaufman, president-elect of the American Diabetes Association. And they are at 50 percent greater risk of having a heart attack or stroke.
If all the 16 million Americans with pre-diabetes developed full-blown disease, it would raise the number of people in the United States with the condition to 33 million, adding about an extra $100 billion in health care costs, Thompson said.
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