A recent review published in The Lancet examines how China - which in 1980 had a diabetes prevalence of less than 1% - currently has the largest number of people with diabetes in the world. In short: China has more than 118 million people living with diabetes, accounting for over 12% of its populati...

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/56356764

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A recent review published in The Lancet examines how China - which in 1980 had a diabetes prevalence of less than 1% - currently has the largest number of people with diabetes in the world.

  • China has more than 118 million people living with diabetes, accounting for over 12% of its population and about 22% of all diabetes cases globally.
  • China’s massive economic growth over the last 50 years has led to lifestyle changes that could be contributing to this epidemic, such as a shifting diet that includes more ultra-processed and sugar-sweetened foods.
  • Environmental factors also play an important role, with China’s population experiencing increased exposures to toxics - like air pollution and endocrine disrupting chemicals - that have been linked to diabetes.

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Diabetes is a critical public health challenge across the globe, with the affected population projected to grow to 1.31 billion by 2050. The authors of this paper emphasize the need for government action that goes beyond public education to include more effective measures like regulations on the industries contributing to harmful lifestyle and environmental factors.

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  • sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al
    10·
    1 day ago

    It’s inevitably a combination of increasingly sedentary lifestyles coupled with a lower quality of food, which is sad. I would be interested to see if this affects those in the cities more than those in the villages.

    • NaibofTabr@infosec.pubEnglish
      3·
      1 day ago

      Could also be partially driven by more widespread access to medical diagnostics. China has some very modern cities, but most of the country isn’t like that, a lot of it is still rural.

        • NaibofTabr@infosec.pubEnglish
          2·
          22 hours ago

          OK, but you do need medical knowledge, and educated physicians to make the diagnoses, and that needs to penetrate a nation of 1.4 billion people which is mostly rural area, most of which didn’t have electricity until the 90s. Statistics don’t become reliable until they have complete coverage.

      • sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al
        3·
        1 day ago

        I didn’t think of that. But I think it’s definitely a factor that diabetes was undiagnosed or unreported.

        • NaibofTabr@infosec.pubEnglish
          3·
          22 hours ago

          The statistics on cancer diagnoses in the US has a similar issue. The rate of cancer diagnoses has increased dramatically over the last 100 years… but also basically all of the lab diagnostic procedures that can precisely identify cancers were developed within that time period.

          Before that, people died of unknown causes or age-related issues, we just didn’t know. People would get chronic illnesses, the doctors would tell them to go to the tropics to convalesce, because they didn’t really know what was wrong and they didn’t have treatment options.

          We’re buried under the weight of what we didn’t know before.