Diabetes afflicts women more than men in Bangladesh, finds a global study

Diabetes afflicts women more than it does men in Bangladesh, according to a study published in the British medical journal The Lancet.

Senior Correspondentbdnews24.com
Published : 7 April 2016, 04:25 PM
Updated : 7 April 2016, 04:25 PM

Prof Mahmudur Rahman, who is the author of The Lancet from Bangladesh, told bdnews24.com that they found 10 percent women living with diabetes. The rate was nine percent in men.

He said overweight, obesity, hormonal issues, and genetic factor might play a role for the higher rate of diabetes in women.

“Those overweight or obese were found three times more likely to be diabetic than the others,” he said, “the richest suffer the most”.

The Lancet released the study on Apr 6 ahead of the World Health Day celebrated on Thursday with the theme ‘beat diabetes’.

The research was led by scientists from Imperial College London, and involved Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, the World Health Organization and nearly 500 researchers across the globe.

This is the largest-ever study of diabetes levels across the world. It found 422 million adults in the world with diabetes in 2014 – which has nearly quadrupled since 1980 when it was 108 million.

The study incorporated data from 4.4 million adults in most of the countries, and compared diabetes levels among adult men and women from 1980 to 2014.

Diabetes results in a person being unable to regulate levels of sugar in their blood, and increases the risk of heart and kidney disease, vision loss, and amputations.

The study found that the global cost of diabetes was $825 billion per year, with the largest cost to individual countries being in China ($170 billion), the USA ($105 billion) and India ($73 billion).

Prof Rahman, who is the director of the government’s disease monitoring arm, IEDCR, said they did not look at the cost issue when they had analysed Bangladesh data.

He said they found almost double the rate of diabetes in urban areas than the villages of Bangladesh.