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| 6/23/2003 |
Diabetes epidemic to strike US
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11:57:23 AM
Washington, June 23 - U.S. federal health officials have warned of a diabetes epidemic that will strike one in three Americans.
It is linked largely to obesity and increasingly sedentary lifestyles.
Through the 1990s, the proportion of people with diabetes has shot up almost 40 per cent, doctor K. M. Venkat Narayan, of the centers for disease control and prevention, said at the weekend.
He warned that every third U.S. child born in 2000 will develop the disease - mostly "adult onset" or type 2 diabetes - which will take 12 years off men's average life spans and 15 years off women's.
Among his panics, men would have an even higher chance of developing diabetes than the rest of the population, with a 45 per cent likelihood for men and a 53 per cent chance for women.
More than 17 million Americans - or about 6 per cent of the population - have diabetes, a disease characterized by high blood sugar levels due to the body's inability to create insulin.
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