‘Diabetes Epidemic Will Continue’ Until Focus Shifts to Prevention
November is American Diabetes Month, a time to raise awareness about the importance of prevention, detection and management, according to the American Diabetes Association.
The CDC estimates that 34.5% of U.S. adults have prediabetes and 10.5% of all Americans have diabetes, making it the ninth-most common chronic disease in the country. Of those with diabetes, 21.4% have not been diagnosed with the condition.
Diabetes also represents a financial burden in the U.S., with diagnosed diabetes costing about $327 billion in 2017, according to the American Diabetes Association.
A new study indicates there are “missed opportunities” for diabetes prevention in the U.S., researchers wrote in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
Arch G. Mainous III, PhD, a professor in the department of health services research, management and policy at the University of Florida, and colleagues analyzed the electronic health records of 21,448 patients within a large health center who met the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force criteria for prediabetes screening between Aug. 1, 2019, and Oct. 31, 2020.
The researchers reported that 62.8% of patients were screened in a manner consistent with the USPSTF recommendations, and of those, 25.5% met the criteria for prediabetes. However, only 5.4% of patients in the latter group were formally diagnosed with prediabetes, and none of them “received appropriate treatment for their prediabetes,” the researchers wrote.
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