1 in 2 adults will develop 'prediabetes' – study

Almost half of 45-year-olds will develop so-called prediabetes, an elevated blood sugar level that often precedes diabetes, according to a study from the Netherlands using population estimates.

Prediabetes, sometimes called impaired glucose metabolism, has no clear symptoms, but people with higher than normal blood sugar based on a blood test should be tested for diabetes every one or two years, according to the American Diabetes Association.

“We have known this from previous studies – but what this study adds is a method of communicating risk in a better way – a person’s lifetime risk of developing diabetes,” said Dr. Kamlesh Khunti of Leicester General Hospital in the UK, who coauthored an editorial accompanying the new results.

One in three healthy 45-year-olds will develop diabetes in his or her lifetime, Khunti said.

Researchers from Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam and the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston used long-term data on about 10,000 adults in the Netherlands.

The study team translated these results into population risk levels at age 45, and found that about half of people would develop prediabetic blood sugar levels before their death, 30 percent would develop full-blown diabetes and nine percent would start taking insulin.