Over 11% Indians diabetic, 3% have hypertension: Lancet survey

The prevalence of diabetes in India is 11.4 per cent, while 35.5 per cent of people suffer from hypertension, according to the findings of a nationwide survey published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology journal.

The study, conducted by the Madras Diabetes Research Foundation in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and other institutes, also found that the prevalence of generalised obesity and abdominal obesity in India stood at 28.6 and 39.5 per cent, respectively.

The results, assessing the burden of non-communicable diseases (NCD) across the states, are based on a survey of 1,13,043 (over 1.1akh) people (33,537 urban and 79,506 rural residents), in 31 states and Union Territories in the country, between 2008 and 2020.

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The survey also showed that 35.5 per cent of Indians suffer from hypertension, 15.3 per cent of people have pre-diabetes, while an alarming 81.2 per cent have dyslipidaemia -- the imbalance of lipids such as cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, (LDL-C), triglycerides, and high-density lipoprotein (HDL).

"All metabolic NCDs except prediabetes were more frequent in urban than rural areas. In many states with a lower index, the ratio of diabetes to prediabetes was less than 1," the authors of the study said.

The team, including researchers from All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, conducted the survey in multiple phases with a stratified multistage sampling design, using three-level stratification based on geography, population size, and socioeconomic status of each state.

"The prevalence of diabetes and other metabolic NCDs in India is considerably higher than previously estimated. While the diabetes epidemic is stabilising in the more developed states of the country, it is still increasing in most other states," the authors of the study said.

"Thus, there are serious implications for the nation, warranting urgent state-specific policies and interventions to arrest the rapidly rising epidemic of metabolic NCDs in India," they said.