Waistline For Diabetes Risk Differs By Race

Currently recommended waist circumference thresholds for identifying people with an increase likelihood of having type 2 diabetes should be modified for Asian and white women and men, a new study suggests. Dr. Rachel Huxley, from The George Institute for International Health, Sydney, Australia,  notes, that  “excess weight, particularly abdominal obesity, is recognized as a major risk factor for diabetes in all populations.

As a result, various indicators of overweight have been incorporated into guidelines for the early identification of individuals with type 2 diabetes. "However, the anthropometric cut points for different ethnic groups have been determined in various ways, leading to uncertainty about their applicability to diabetes screening," they explain.

In an attempt to clarify this uncertainty, they analyzed data for 155,122 individuals (86 percent Asian; 52 percent female) from 10 countries in the Asia-Pacific region.

The investigators found that body measurements that best identified an increased risk of diabetes without producing too many "false hits" were lower in Asians compared with whites.

For example, at a waist circumference of 80 centimeters, about 5 percent of Asian women were diabetic compared with 1 percent of white women.

The researchers calculate that the optimal cut point for identifying people with a high chance of having diabetes was a waist circumference of 85 centimeters for Asian men versus 99 centimeters for white men.
For women, the corresponding measurements were 80 centimeters for Asian women versus 85 centimeters for white women.

When body mass index (BMI) was used to measure excess weight, the pattern was similar. Irrespective of which measure was used, however, the prevalence of diabetes was consistently higher among Asians than whites at any given level of excess weight, "in agreement with earlier findings," the authors note.

Diabetes Care, December 2007.