According to an alarming study published by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) in The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology journal, 315 million people in India suffer from hypertension, and 101 million suffer from diabetes. The study also revealed that 136 million Indians are pre-diabetic, 213 million live with high cholesterol, 185 million suffer from high LDL cholesterol or bad cholesterol, 254 million live with moderate obesity and 351 million have abdominal obesity. Suffers from obesity.
The ICMR-India Diabetes (ICMR-IndiaB) study is based on a survey of 1,13,043 people – 33,537 urban and 79,506 rural population – aged 20 years and above, between 2008 and 2020. Urban and rural people were included in the survey. Territories of 31 states, union territories and the National Capital Territory of India.
The researchers, including Dr Se Ranjit Mohan Anjana, said, “Rates of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are rising rapidly in India with wide regional variations. We aimed to measure the prevalence of metabolic NCDs in India and identify inter-state and intra-regional variations.” to analyse.” Mohan’s Diabetes Specialist Center and Madras Diabetes Research Foundation, ICMR-Chennai.
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All metabolic NCDs, such as obesity, hypertension and dyslipidemia, except prediabetes, were found to be higher in urban areas than in rural areas. Many states with low Human Development Index had a ratio of diabetes to prediabetes less than one.
Furthermore, the study showed that some states such as Kerala, Puducherry, Goa, Sikkim and Punjab had the highest prevalence of NCDs as compared to others.
The prevalence of diabetes, in particular, was found to be highest in the southern and northern regions of India, with higher incidence rates in urban areas. On the other hand, the spread was less in the central and northeastern regions. Hypertension was highly prevalent in urban areas and across the country except in central India.
The researchers said, “The prevalence of diabetes and other metabolic NCDs in India is much higher than previously estimated. While the diabetes epidemic is stabilizing in the more developed states of the country, it is still increasing in most other states.”
“Thus, with serious implications for the country, urgent state-specific policies and interventions are needed to curb the rapidly growing epidemic of metabolic NCDs in India,” he added.