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By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter
 The
rate of new cases of type 2 diabetes has nearly doubled in
the United States in the last decade, with most new cases
appearing in southern states, federal officials reported
Thursday.
New diagnoses of type 2 diabetes rose from 4.8 per 1,000
people from 1995 to 1997 to 9.1 per 1,000 people from 2005
to 2007. These new cases mirror the increase in obesity
rates, and obesity is a leading cause of the blood sugar
disease, officials said.
"The risk factors for type 2 diabetes include obesity and
inactivity, and we know the South has a high prevalence of
both obesity and physical inactivity when compared to the
other regions in the United States," said study author Karen
Kirtland, a data analyst in the U.S. Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention's Division of Diabetes Translation.
"The message that we want to get out is to promote lifestyle
interventions for people who are at risk for diabetes,"
Kirtland said. "People who are at risk for the disease may
be able to delay it or prevent it by losing weight, being
physically active and making healthy food choices."
For the study, published in the Oct. 31 issue of the CDC's
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Kirtland's group used
the CDC's Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System to
collect data on new diabetes cases in 33
states that reported data for both time periods.
The researchers said the state-by-state breakdown, the first
of its kind, found that new cases of diabetes ranged from a
low of five per 1,000 people in Minnesota to 12.7 per 1,000
in West Virginia. The territory of Puerto Rico had the
largest number of new cases at 12.8 per 1,000 people.
The highest numbers of new type 2 diabetes cases were in
Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, South
Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia, the
researchers found.
An estimated 23.6 million American adults and children have
diabetes, but almost one-quarter of them are unaware they
have the disease. In 90 percent to 95 percent of cases,
people have type 2 disease.
Dr. David L. Katz, director of the Yale University School of
Medicine's Prevention Research Center, said reversing the
obesity epidemic is key to cutting the rate of type 2
diabetes.
"We have known for some time that type 2 diabetes is a
worsening epidemic in the United States and much of the
world," Katz said. "We now have evidence that the
rate at which new cases of diabetes are developing is also
increasing."
Katz noted that southern states tend to have more poorer
people than other sections of the country, a statistic that
could contribute to the greater number of new diabetes cases
in that region. "This is unsurprising, as obesity and
poverty are strongly associated, and obesity is the
predominant risk factor for type 2 diabetes," he said.
The new report could have frightening implications for
future generations of Americans, Katz said. "With the entire
adult population of the United States projected to be
overweight or obese by 2048, should current trends persist,
diabetes is a clear and present danger to us all. That
threat will persist and worsen, until we resolve to turn
back the tide of epidemic obesity," he said.
As the number of type 2 diabetes cases increase, so does the
cost of treating the disease. Reporting in the Oct. 27 issue
of Archives of Internal Medicine, researchers said the
overall cost of drugs for type 2 diabetes almost doubled
between 2001 and 2007. Yet, it's not clear if newer drugs
improve patient care and results, the researchers said.
Type 2 diabetes is a lifelong disease caused by the body's
inability to properly use the hormone insulin to transport
sugar from the blood to cells for use as energy. Blacks,
Hispanics, Native Americans and Asian Americans/Pacific
Islanders are more prone to type 2 diabetes, as are people
with a family history of the disease, according to the
National Institutes of Health.
Complications from the disease can include limb amputations,
blindness, heart disease and kidney failure.
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