Friday, Apr 26, 2024 | Last Update : 08:21 AM IST
New screening tool to identify high-risk Type 2 diabetics
Researchers claimed that bigger the thighs, the less were the chances of having diabetes.
NEW DELHI: Health experts have found a simple and cost-effective screening tool to identify people at high-risk of Type 2 diabetes.
Researchers from the department of medicine at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital (SGRH) and Moti Lal Nehru Medical College, Allahabad, claimed that bigger the thighs, the less were the chances of having diabetes.
Published in recent edition of Indian Journal of Endocrinology and Metabolism, this retrospective analysis was done on 1,055 patients who visited the SGRH from March 2013 to September 2016.
According to the author and chairperson, department of medicine, SGRH, Dr S.P. Byotra, diabetes was a major challenge being faced by clinicians worldwide. An estimated 415 million people suffered from diabetes all over the world in 2015.
“Of concern is the fact that that almost half of these are undiagnosed. Mere diagnosis and treatment of diabetes will prove to be futile and uneconomical, unless we identify those at risk at an early stage,” Dr Byotra said.
“For this, we require simple and inexpensive screening tools that can be used easily, wherever and whenever required by clinician,” he added.
Author and senior consultant, department of medicine, SGRH, Dr Atul Gogia said, “Our study found that diabetics had significantly greater waist circumference (WC) than non-diabetics.”
Also, diabetics had lesser thigh circumference (TC) than non-diabetics. We found that waist thigh ratio of 2.3 i.e WC divided by TC in centimetres served as a cut off point or predictor of diabetes.
Simply put, a person having waist-thigh ratio of less than 2.3 will be at low risk of diabetes and may not require further investigations.”
Corresponding author and researcher, Dr Shivanjali Kumar said,” The objective of this study was to provide an easy and inexpensive tool that can cut down the costs of investigations and reduce economic burden on patients.
“Our study derived waist-thigh-ratio cut-off point of 2.3 may prove to be of utmost use as a simple and inexpensive diagnostic and screening tool, especially in developing countries such as ours,” he added.
