medwireNews: People with a South Asian or mixed ethnic background and those with social deprivation have a particularly high risk for progressing from prediabetes to type 2 diabetes, research shows.
“Our findings emphasise that clinicians need to recognise the differing risk across their patient populations to implement appropriate prevention strategies,” write Krishnarajah Nirantharakumar (University of Birmingham, UK) and co-researchers in Diabetic Medicine.
During an average follow-up of 2.6 years, the overall rate of progression to type 2 diabetes among 397,853 UK residents with prediabetes recorded in The Health Improvement Network (THIN) database was 53.5 per 1000 person–years.
But people of South Asian descent were a significant 31% more likely than White people to progress to diabetes, and those with a mixed ethnic background had a significant 22% increased risk.
And compared with people in the first Townsend quintile (least deprived), those in the third, fourth, and fifth quintiles had respective 5%, 15%, and 17% increases in the risk for progression. The study authors note that the effects of deprivation seemed strongest among people of White European ethnicity, whereas there was no evidence of an association between deprivation and progression risk in people with South Asian ethnicity.
“These under-served groups should be actively targeted when designing diabetes prevention programmes,” say the researchers.
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Diabet Med 2022; doi:10.1111/dme.14996