Age is a more important factor than weight when screening patients for diabetes, according to a new study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.[1]
“It might sound counterintuitive because we think of being overweight or obese as the primary cause of diabetes,” lead author Matthew J. O’Brien, MD, an associate professor of medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, said in a prepared statement. “But if we make decisions about diabetes testing based on weight, we will miss some people from racial and ethnic minority groups who are developing prediabetes and diabetes at lower weights.”
In 2021, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) updated its recommendations for screening for prediabetes and diabetes, saying that all asymptomatic adults between the ages of 35 and 70 years old who are overweight or obese should be screened. This represented an update compared to the previous recommendations from 2015, which focused on overweight/obese adults between the ages of 40 and 70 years old.
According to O’Brien et al., these recommendations remain too focused on weight. The group tested its thinking by testing the effectiveness of multiple screening approaches on a group of more than 3,200 patients. Overall, the team found, screening all patients between the ages of 35 and 70—no matter what their weight happened to be—made the greatest impact. While the updated USPSTF recommendations did identify more patients with prediabetes or diabetes than the 2015 recommendations, taking weight out of the equation and only using age was found to provide even more value.
“It’s imperative that we identify a screening approach that is equitable across the entire U.S. population,” O’Brien said in the same statement. “Our findings illustrate that screening all adults aged 35 to 70 years, regardless of weight or body mass index, performs equitably across all racial and ethnic groups.”
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Michael has more than 16 years of experience as a professional writer and editor. He has written at length about cardiology, radiology, artificial intelligence and other key healthcare topics.