ATLANTA, Dec. 1 (UPI) — New diagnoses of type 2 diabetes have dropped by about 20 percent in the last six years, the first sustained decline in about 25 years,according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Analysts said they were unsure if the disease has peaked or if people are doing more to prevent it, but the declines link up with other reports on improvements to diet and exercise in the United States.
The decrease of new diagnoses from about 1.7 million in 2008 to 1.4 million in 2014 represents a sharp drop, the CDC reported, and shows a slow reversal of the continuous increase in new cases that started in the early 1990s.
The number of yearly diagnoses remains double what it was in 1990 — there were about 600,000 diagnoses that year — but rises appear to have peaked in 2008 and have now decreased steadily since then. Researchers have been cautious to embrace the small annual drops, however their consistent downward direction appears to be a trend.
“It’s not yet time to have a parade,” Dr. David M. Nathan, director of the Diabetes Center and Clinical Research Center at Massachusetts General Hospital, told the New York Times. He said, however, the decline in cases during the last several years shows “it has finally entered into the consciousness of our population that the sedentary lifestyle is a real problem, that increased body weight is a real problem.”
Obesity has been a growing problem in the country since at least the early 1990s, as a recent study showed nearly 75 percent of men and 66 percent of women in the United States are overweight or obese.
