Title: Type 2 Diabetes Rates Quadruple Worldwide Since 1980
Headings: Type 2 Diabetes Rates Quadruple Worldwide Since 1980
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Type 2 Diabetes Rates Quadruple Worldwide Since 1980

Content: Pakistan, Mexico, Egypt, and Indonesia are all now in the top 10 countries with the largest number of adults with diabetes. Age-adjusted prevalence of diabetes doubled in Pakistan, Mexico, and Indonesia for both women and men and nearly tripled in Egypt for both genders. And in the United States, age-adjusted prevalence of diabetes increased by 50% in women (4.3% to 6.4%) and by 80% in men (4.7% to 8.2%). ( These statistics conflict somewhat with the latest numbers from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which released data in December suggesting that the incidence of diabetes may actually be declining in the United States)
Northwestern European countries had the lowest rates, with age-adjusted prevalence less than 4% in women and 5% to 6% in men in Switzerland, Austria, Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands. By region, the Pacific Islands have the highest diabetes rates in the world, with Polynesia and Micronesia experiencing the greatest increases in diabetes prevalence, reaching over 20% in women and men. Melanesia, the Middle East and North Africa followed with prevalence rates of about 15% each. The American Samoa Story
Of the Pacific Island nations, American Samoa had the highest national prevalence of diabetes in 2014, with over 30% of Samoan men and women affected, and the country is also the one where women have the highest mean body mass index (BMI) in the world, notes Stephen McGarvey, PhD, of Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, an anthropologist with extensive research experience on Samoa, who contributed to both the Lancet papers on diabetes and obesity. "The Samoans started early and went to very high levels…but there are some other nations, or even parts of nations, whose rate of change recently has [also] been very rapid," Dr McGarvey observes in a press release from his institution. Dr McGarvey cites the "nutrition transition" — a move away from traditional diet to a more Westernized diet characterized by high-calorie, high-fat processed and prepared foods — as playing a large role in what has happened in American Samoa and elsewhere in the developing world. Also, modernization has meant travel by car and bus has replaced walking, and work has become less physically demanding and more sedentary, he adds.