Biotech Values

[DewDiligence]

[OT] Startling figures on diabetes:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/23/health/23BROD.html?pagewanted=all
[Excerpts]

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Some 17 million Americans have diabetes (more than 90 percent of them Type 2), with about a third of these people unaware of their disorder and its potentially serious consequences. Another 16 million, with a condition called prediabetes, are on their way to developing it. Worldwide, 194 million people have diabetes, which seems to accompany rising affluence.

The incidence of diabetes has been rising in recent years, in children as well as in adults. Considering only diagnosed cases in adults, the prevalence rose 40 percent in the 1990's, from 4.9 percent to 6.9 percent of adults. By 2050, unless current trends are reversed, experts predict a further increase of 165 percent.

Even more disturbing is a new estimate of the lifetime risk of developing diabetes among boys and girls born in the year 2000. An analysis published in October in The Journal of the American Medical Association by scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention predicts the following for those born in 2000: 32.8 percent of boys and 36.5 percent of girls will develop diabetes during their lifetimes. Among non-Hispanic blacks, 40.2 percent of boys and 49 percent of girls, and among Hispanics, 45.4 percent of boys and 52.5 percent of girls face the same fate.

Among all those in whom diabetes is diagnosed at age 40, men will lose 11.6 years of life and 18.6 years of quality life and women will lose 14.3 years of life and 22 years of quality life as a result of the disease.

In other words, more than one in three whites and about two in five blacks and one in two Hispanics are destined to develop diabetes unless some drastic changes occur.

The reason for this frightening prospect is all too obvious: Americans are too fat and too sedentary. Being overweight, and especially the accumulation of fat around the waist, can cause insulin resistance and is the primary risk factor for Type 2 diabetes. About three-fourths of people with Type 2 diabetes also have high blood pressure, which further increases their risk of cardiovascular and kidney diseases.
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