Mexican Americans at greater diabetes risk than Anglos

Mon, 22 Aug 2011
New research has found that Mexican Americans face a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes than do Anglo Americans, and much more so than those living in Mexico.

The long-term San Antonio Heart Study, which monitored thousands of people over a 30-year period, showed that Anglo American diabetics had twice the chance of non-diabetics of dying, while Mexican Americans faced three times the risk and people with diabetes living in Mexico City were four times more likely to die.

In addition, the risk of death was practically the same, regardless of whether the patients were Anglo American, Mexican American or residents of Mexico. However, the research, which was published in the Annals of Epidemiology, was based on data taken before the introduction of many new advances in diabetes treatment, as well as more awareness of its effects.

There were also factors involving poverty and social deprivation that were not fully taken into account, which separate health reasons from environmental ones behind the findings.

Researcher Kelly Hunt, commented "Although the prevalence of diabetes is so much higher in Mexican Americans than in non-Hispanic whites, it wouldn't be all that surprising to me that if the severity of the disease was somehow worse. But it's hard to measure that."

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