The diabetes prevalence has gone up dramatically in the past two decades throughout the world. There has been dramatic rise in the number of diabetics from about 30 millions in 1985 to about 180 millions in the year 2000. If the current trend of increase continues there will be more than 360 millions of diabetes patients in the world by 2030.
Both the types of diabetes i.e. type1 and type2 are increasing but the increase in type2 is much more compared to type1. This may be due to change in lifestyles in the countries becoming industrialized and due to reduced physical activities and increase in the number of obese and overweight population. In Asia this is truer due to rapid industrialization and 6 out of top ten countries with diabetes are in Asia. The top ten countries with largest diabetic population are given here in descending order and they are India, China, USA, Indonesia, Japan, Pakistan, Russia, Brazil, Italy and Bangladesh. India will be known as diabetic capital of the world in near future.
In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Atlanta, estimated that 20.8 million persons, (7% of the population), had diabetes in 2005 and about one third (30%) of them are not aware of the disease. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also estimated that the prevalence of diabetes in USA in the year 2005 was 0.22% in those below 20 years of age and 9.6% in those above 20 years. For the people above 60 years of age it was more than 20% (20.9%). The prevalence is similar in men and women in all age groups.
There is large variation in the incidence of diabetes. In Scandinavian countries (Finland, Norway, Sweden) the prevalence of type1 diabetes is highest e.g. in Finland incidence of type1 diabetes is 35/100,000 per year, whereas it is only 1-3/100,000 per year in China and Japan. USA and European countries fall in the intermediate category with the incidence of type1 diabetes about 8-17/100,000 per year.
Diabetes is a major cause of morbidity and mortality, but studies indicate that diabetes is underreported as a cause of death. In the United States, diabetes was listed as the sixth-leading cause of death in 2002. Diabetes is the fifth leading cause of death worldwide and is responsible for almost 3 million deaths annually, which is about 2%–5% of total deaths worldwide.
