The prevalence of diabetes worldwide will far outstrip even the sharp increase currently projected unless rising trends of obesity are controlled, health experts said on Saturday. Adult-onset diabetes has been linked to risk factors like aging, an inactive lifestyle, unhealthy diets, smoking, alcohol and obesity. The silent, chronic disease damages the heart, blood vessels, eyes, kidneys and nerves and was responsible for 3.8 million deaths worldwide in 2007. The International Diabetes Foundation estimates a current prevalence of 246 million diabetes cases worldwide and projects it will hit 380 million by 2025, but experts say these figures may well be an underestimate. "The projections are conservative because they take into account only aging and urbanization but not obesity, which if unarrested, will lead to more cases," Gojka Roglic of the World Health Organization's diabetes program told a regional diabetes conference in Chennai, southern India. Roglic said not a single country in the world had shown any signs of a plateau for obesity. "It's the responsibility of governments to enable populations to create the conditions where (healthy) lifestyle is an easy choice rather than something that's very difficult to achieve," Roglic told Reuters.
