Diabetes AtlasIDF Diabetes Atlas: Global estimates of the prevalence of diabetes for 2011 and 2030
Introduction
Diabetes mellitus is one of the most common chronic diseases in nearly all countries, and continues to increase in numbers and significance, as economic development and urbanization lead to changing lifestyles characterised by reduced physical activity, and increased obesity. Estimates of the current and future burden of diabetes are important in order to allocate community and health resources, to emphasise the role of lifestyle, and encourage measures to counteract trends for increasing prevalence.
There have been several previous estimates of the number of persons with diabetes [1], [2], [3], [4] and recently the Global Burden of Disease project published estimates for the years 1980 and 2008 using a complex multi-level approach [5]. The International Diabetes Federation (IDF) has routinely produced estimates of the prevalence of diabetes every 3 years from the year 2000 [6], [7], [8], [9], [10] and the estimates produced here update the IDF estimates for 216 countries and territories.
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Study selection
Full details of the methods and assumptions are given in the accompanying paper by Guariguata and Whiting [11]. Briefly, the PubMed database and Google Scholar were searched for sources published between January 1980 and April 2011, using the search terms: (‘diabetes’ or ‘impaired glucose tolerance’) and ‘prevalence’ and (country name or region/continent); ‘cardiovascular risk factors’ and (country name or region/continent).
Studies were identified that reported on the prevalence of diabetes for
Results
A total of 565 data sources were reviewed, of which 170 sources from 110 countries were selected.
The data sources and the results for the 80 most populous countries (those with 2011 adult population of greater than 6.399 million, with a combined 2011 population of 94% of the world adult population) are shown in Table 1, Table 2. There were 70 of the 80 countries that had their own data (98 separate studies). Details of prevalence and case numbers for all 216 countries can be found in the online
Discussion
The estimates presented here are based on methods that are an evolution of the methods developed by Shaw et al. [10] and suggest that in 2011 there will be 366 million people worldwide with diabetes, with considerable disparity between populations and regions. The pattern of diabetes varies considerably according to countries’ income status. For countries classified by the World Bank as being high-income countries, most people with diabetes are aged over 60 years, whereas for low- and
Conflict of interest
There are no conflicts of interest.
Acknowledgements
The IDF Diabetes Atlas project was supported by the following sponsors: Lilly Diabetes, Merck and Co, Inc., Novo Nordisk A/S supported through an unrestricted grant by the Novo Nordisk Changing Diabetes initiative, and Sanofi.
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