NRIs MORE PRONE TO DIABETES

NRIs more prone to diabetes
Kounteya Sinha
[ 14 Nov, 2006 0024hrs ISTTIMES NEWS NETWORK ]

NEW DELHI: Urban Indians are far more overweight and abdominally obese than non-resident Indians. But surprisingly, more NRIs suffer from diabetes than Indian citizens.

This is the finding of a four-year-long $1,50,000 research, funded by the US Congress to study patterns of obesity and diabetes among NRIs and Indian citizens.

Commissioned by Texas University, the study was conducted jointly by Indian and American physicians in seven sites in the US (Houston, Phoenix, Washington DC, Boston, Edison, Parsippany and San Diego) and one site each in urban (Delhi) and rural (Dindigul, Tamil Nadu) India.

According to the study, 17.4% NRIs were diabetic compared to 13.6% in Delhi and 9% in rural India. Nearly one-fifth of them did not know they had the disease.

The higher prevalence of diabetes among NRIs is being put down to their mechanised lifestyle, a trend fast catching up in urban India.

The 2,146 subjects (1,038 NRIs, 599 rural Indians and 508 urban Indians) were above 18 years of age. Over 60% of those from US, 50% from Delhi and 32% from rural India were male.

NRIs also had higher prevalence of metabolic syndrome. Nearly 33.5% of them suffered from it while the number stood at 30.8% for urban Indians and 8.6% in rural India.

MS is characterised by a group of risk factors that include abdominal obesity, low HDL cholesterol and high LDL cholesterol, elevated blood pressure and insulin resistance.

People with three of the five MS are at increased risk of coronary heart disease.