New study highlights diabetes risk for South Asians
Dr Samiul Mostafa of our Department of Cardiovascular Sciences has led a study that reveals that South Asians (people of Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Sri Lanka origin) have higher levels of blood sugar than white Europeans independent of risk factors that influence sugar levels.
According to the study South Asians had higher levels of three measures of blood sugar: HbA1c (a measure of blood sugar over three months), fasting plasma glucose, and two-hour plasma glucose which are all used for diagnosis of Type 2 Diabetes. Importantly, these higher levels of sugar markers in South Asians were not accounted for by differences in risk factors that influence diabetes, suggesting they were independently higher.
The study of 4,688 white Europeans and 1,352 South Asians has been published in Diabetes Care, a journal of the American Diabetes Association.
