Focus on age, not weight, to capture the greatest number of people in all racial and ethnic groups with prediabetes and diabetes, reports a new Northwestern Medicine study.
Screening all adults aged 35 to 70 years, regardless of weight, identifies the greatest proportion of adults with prediabetes and diabetes in the U.S. This approach will also maximize the ability to diagnose prediabetes and diabetes across all racial and ethnic groups, Northwestern investigators found.
The study will be published March 24 in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
Asian American adults often develop diabetes and prediabetes at a normal weight. As a result, they are the most likely racial group to be missed in the recent 2021 guidelines for prediabetes and diabetes screening, reports the new study. An estimated 6 million Asian Americans have prediabetes or undiagnosed diabetes, according to the new study.
This is one of the first studies to examine the health-equity implications of the current screening recommendations. Northwestern investigators examined the clinical performance of the 2021 USPSTF prediabetes and diabetes screening recommendation, as well as alternate age and Body Mass Index (BMI) cutoffs. The performance was assessed in the entire U.S. adult population, and separately by race and ethnicity.
