Diet changes bring diabetes

AUSTRALIA'S diabetes epidemic is even worse among some ethnic groups, experts warn, in some cases with one in five adults affected by the disease.

Professor Paul Zimmet, director of the International Diabetes Institute in Melbourne, said the higher rates were occurring because of changes in traditional lifestyle and diet.

He made the discovery while analysing the results of a 2000 survey of 11,000 Australians. The study initially found that, overall, 7.4 per cent of adults aged more than 25 suffered diabetes.

But a new analysis of the figures found much higher rates among people who identified themselves as being from particular groups, including Asians, Pacific Islanders and those from the Middle East. Pacific Islanders who lived in westernised countries suffered some of the highest rates of diabetes in the world, but there was "virtually no diabetes" among those who maintained a traditional lifestyle.

"It's the change in diet, it's the change in physical activity," he said. "And of course there are other things such as social dislocation and potentially stress involved."

Professor Zimmet will present his research at a diabetes forum in Canberra today.

The forum will bring together diabetes experts in a bid to set five-year goals to tackle the disease's expansion.
more from The Australian