Latino Diabetes Statistics: New Study Finds Group Is Five Times More Likely To Develop Type 2

A new study -- published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) -- has linked a gene variant prevalent in Latinos with a fivefold risk of type 2 diabetes. The findings of this study offer a possible explanation to why diabetes is so common within the Latino population.

The researchers behind the study took DNA samples from Latinos in the United States and Mexicans over the course of ten years -- nearly half of the subjects had type 2 diabetes and half did not. Of the subjects who had type 2 diabetes, the genetic variant was found in over 2 percent and only 0.36 percent of the subjects without type 2 diabetes.

“Further research is warranted to evaluate the clinical relevance of these findings,” wrote Karol Estrada, from the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, and colleagues, in an institute news release in the JAMA study.

Incidentally, new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has discovered that one-fourth of people with diabetes are unaware of their condition. According to their findings, there is a higher prevalent of diabetes in the United States (29 million people), more than one in three adults have prediabetes (86 million), and of the prediabetic population, nine in ten do not know of their borderline diabetic blood sugar levels. The CDC has also disclosed that 38 percent of Hispanics have prediabetes.

The CDC findings echo those of a national study on Latino health was released earlier this year by the National Institutes of Health, which found that Latinos are prone to develop Type 2 diabetes and 1 in 3 Latinos had pre-diabetes. The diabetes prevalence and trends were seen across the board despite national-origin differences amongst the population.

Diabetes is a significant public health concern for the Hispanic community, as the Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos found in a recent study that 35 percent of participants had metabolic syndrome, 36 percent had prediabetes, and 17 percent had diabetes. That said, it is often difficult to identify prevalence rates and causes within the Hispanic population due to the diversity seen in the Latino community. For instance, diabetes is more common in those of Mexican ancestry than those of Dominican background.