US diabetes rates stabilising, CDC study finds

According to a new study by researchers at the Centers for Disease Control, rates of diabetes in the United States have slowed and are leveling off, though statistics suggest rates continue to rise among African American and Hispanic patients.
To get a more accurate measure of the disease's trajectory over the last 30-plus years, researchers analyzed the health data of 665,000 adults ages 20 to 79. They focused on the incidence of Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes between 1980 and 2012. Analysis showed while rates remained stable during the 80s, the disease's prevalence shot up during the 90s and early 2000s.
Diabetes rates more than doubled between 1990 and 2008, from 3.5 percent of U.S. adults to 7.9 percent. And while diabetes rates have continued to rise since 2008, the rate of increase tapered off between 2008 and 2012. The percentage of adults with diabetes in 2012 was 8.3 percent. The rate of new diagnosis in the last several years has also remained stable, researchers found.
"However, there appear to be continued increases in the prevalence or incidence of diabetes among subgroups, including non-Hispanic black and Hispanic subpopulations and those with a high school education or less," the authors wrote in the journal JAMA.
The news is only one very small positive among a litany of worrying statistics surrounding what remains a serious health issue for millions of Americans.
According to the CDC, in 2012 there were 21.0 million Americans with diabetes -- 1.7 million of those were newly diagnosed patients.