A new study conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows the increase of diabetes rates in the United States has slowed down over the past four years.
Two decades ago, diabetes rates in the United States doubled with an average of 4.5 percent per year between 1990 and 2008. Current rates are now at an average of 0.6 percent, WebMD News reported.
"We are beginning to see a slowing of the increase in diabetes, and potentially a plateauing," said study co-author Ann Albright, director of the CDC's Division of Diabetes Translation. "It should give us all some optimism, but it does mean we should not sit on our laurels."
Researchers looked at the data of 665,000 adults aged 20 to 79. They observed that the rates doubled between 1990 and 2008, but the number of new cases significantly plummeted between 2008 and 2012 to 7.1 per 1,000 people.
According to the Wall Street Journal, one of the possible reasons for the decline could be linked to the levelling of obesity rates, in which the rates remained at 35 percent - where they've stayed since 2003. But, researchers are uncertain if the same levelling will also happen for diabetes cases.
"Before we get too excited, we need to see this trend over a much longer period of time. I want to see several more years of data," said Venkat Narayan, a diabetes expert and professor of global health and epidemiology at Emory University's Rollins School of Public Health, to the Wall Street Journal.
Based on a National Diabetes Statistics Report released in June, about 29.1 million of the American population had diabetes, and 8.1 million of them were not aware that they have the disease. Diabetes remains to be the 7th leading cause of death in the United States.
The results of the study were published in the Sept. 24 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
