Diabetes Risk: Clues in Your Waist?

Namita Nayyar (WF Team)

12 years ago

Diabetes Risk: Clues in Your Waist?

– Reported June 6, 2012

(Ivanhoe Newswire) Diabetes affects 25.8 million people in America as the seventh-leading cause of death in the United States. Now, a new study may shed light on an effective strategy for the prevention of this disease.

Claudia Langenberg and colleagues conducted a collaborative re-analysis of data from the InterAct case-control study, ultimately finding a link between waist circumference and the risk of type 2 diabetes, independently of body mass index (BMI). After estimating the association of BMI and waist circumference with type 2 diabetes, they found that BMI and waist circumference were independently associated with the risk of type 2 diabetes but waist circumference was a stronger risk factor for women than men.

Overweight individuals account for a third of the US and UK adult population; these findings point towards the possible effectiveness of a targeted measurement of waist circumference to identify high-risk people that might benefit from individualized advice. The authors were quoted as saying, Our results clearly show the value that measurement of [waist circumference] may have in identifying which people among the large population of overweight individuals are at highest risk of diabetes.