More than half of Asian Americans with diabetes are undiagnosed - highest among all ethnic and racial subgroups studied in the US, a new study has found.
Using 2011-2012 data from the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), researchers found for the first time that 51 per cent of Asian Americans with diabetes are undiagnosed.
According to researchers from the US National Institutes of Health and the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, prevalence of diabetes for all American adults went up, from nearly 10 per cent to over 12 per cent between 1988 and 2012.
Diabetes prevalence also went up in every age, sex, level of education, income and racial/ethnic subgroup.
However, the proportion of people with diabetes that was undiagnosed decreased 23 per cent between 1988-1994 and 2011-2012, researchers said.
Diabetes was common in Asian Americans, at 21 per cent. Hispanic Americans had the highest prevalence of diabetes at nearly 23 per cent, with 49 per cent of that undiagnosed.
One difference between Asian Americans and the other groups studied was that Asian Americans often develop type 2 diabetes at a lower body mass index (BMI), researchers said.
The data showed the average BMI for all Asian Americans surveyed was under 25. For the US population overall, the average BMI was just below 29.
A BMI of 25 to under 30 is considered overweight, and a BMI of 30 or greater is considered obese.
"The large proportion of people with undiagnosed diabetes points to both a greater need to test for type 2 diabetes and a need for more education on when to test for type 2 diabetes, especially since populations such as Asian Americans may develop type 2 at a lower body mass than other groups," said senior author Catherine Cowie, director of diabetes at the NIH's National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK).
Researchers used NHANES results from 26,415 adults between 1988 and 2012. For the 2011-2012 survey, NHANES surveyed a disproportionate number of Asian Americans.
"By NHANES surveying a much larger group of Asian Americans to provide more precise statistics, we're able to identify with hard data a problem that had not been well-studied in the past," said first author Andy Menke, an NIDDK contractor.
About 1 in 5 non-Hispanic black adults had diabetes, higher than the overall population. However, they had a lower proportion of diabetes that was undiagnosed than the Asian or Hispanic subgroups, with about 37 per cent being undiagnosed.
Non-Hispanic whites had the lowest prevalence of diabetes at 11 per cent, and they had the lowest proportion of undiagnosed, at just over 32 per cent.
The study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
