The recommended age to start screening overweight and obese people for diabetes will be lowered by five years from 40 to 35, the nation’s leading panel of preventive health experts has announced. A study published Aug. 24 in Journal of the American Medical Association that found the rate of type 2 diabetes in youths 19 and younger nearly doubled between 2001 and 2017. The greatest increases occurred among Black youths and Hispanic youths.
Although the number of young people with diabetes is increasing, it still remains relatively low. Fewer than one of every 1,000 American children had type 2 diabetes in 2017, study results indicate.
“Even though there is certainly growing obesity in younger people, the increase in prediabetes and diabetes really starts at age 35. We could not find the evidence that would allow us to further lower the screening age,” Dr. Michael Barry, vice-chair of the USPSTF says.
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) has decided an earlier five years of testing could help detect more people who have prediabetes, Barry adds.
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That will give those folks a chance to avoid full-blown diabetes by adopting a healthier diet, exercising more often and losing weight, Barry notes.
Diabetes is “a major risk factor for heart attacks and strokes, but also the leading cause of blindness and kidney failure in the United States, and a major reason behind limb amputations,” he says. “No one would say this isn’t important.”
About 13% of American adults — 34 million people — have diabetes, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But more than one in three (35%) have prediabetes, a condition in which blood sugar levels are higher than normal but haven’t yet irreversibly harmed the body’s ability to respond to insulin.
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