Epidemic

Close to half (40%) of the adult population of the USA is expected to develop type 2 diabetes at some point during their lifetime, suggests a major study published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology. The future looks even worse for some ethnic minority groups, with one in two (> 50%) Hispanic men and women and non-Hispanic black women predicted to develop the disease. A team of US researchers combined data from nationally representative US population interviews and death certificates for about 600 000 adults to estimate trends in the lifetime risk of diabetes and years of life lost to diabetes in the USA between 1985 and 2011.