China now has more people with diabetes than any other country, a new report shows, making it clear that the nation’s soaring economic growth is taking a toll on public health. According to the report, more than 92 million adults in China have diabetes, and nearly 150 million more are well on their way to developing it. The disease is more common in people with large waistlines and in those who live in cities, the report indicates. “For every person in the world with HIV there are three people in China with diabetes,” said David Whiting, an epidemiologist with the International Diabetes Federation, who was not involved in the research. The Federation projected last year that some 435 million people would have diabetes by 2030. “With this new study, we’re going to have to rerun our estimate,” Whiting told Reuters Health. The report, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, is based on a nationally representative sample of more than 46,000 people who were tested for diabetes. (Reuters)
