CDC says diabetes rates may show first signs of slowing

The nation's diabetes epidemic may show the first signs of slowing, researchers from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say.

The numbers remain big and are still rising: 8.3% of adults had been diagnosed with diabetes as of 2012. But the rates at which new cases are accumulating and overall counts are climbing have slowed in recent years, says a report published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The findings are surprising and encouraging, says study co-author Ann Albright, director of a CDC division focused on diabetes prevention.

"It gives us hope," she says. "It's important that we begin to slow down this runaway train."

Diabetes is the nation's seventh-leading cause of death. It raises risks for heart attacks, blindness, kidney disease and limb amputation.

The study is the first to look at decades-long trends in diabetes rates. It found nearly steady rates of new cases and overall prevalence in the 1980s, followed by sharp increases of about 4.5% a year from 1990 to 2008. Then, from 2008 to 2012, rates of increase slowed.

"We are still seeing (new and existing cases) going up, but the speed at which they are going up is leveling off," Albright says.

One possible explanation: Diabetes rates are tracking obesity rates, which also show signs of leveling off, despite some contradictory evidence (including a report out a week ago showing rising rates of abdominal obesity — fat around the belly). Type 2 diabetes, the most common kind, is linked to obesity.

Some of the decline also might be linked to newer diagnostic methods that may pick up fewer cases, Albright says.

Important to note: No slowing has been seen in new cases among blacks and Hispanics or in overall rates among people with high school educations or less.

The report reflects only diagnosed cases. A previous CDC report said 8 million of the nation's 29 million people with diabetes have not been diagnosed. An additional 86 million adults are thought to have pre-diabetes — blood sugar levels high enough to be worrisome but not high enough to be called diabetes. Together, those groups add up to about half of U.S. adults.

The new report does not change an overall picture that remains highly concerning, says Robert Ratner, chief scientific and medical officer of the American Diabetes Association. He says the new data should be interpreted "with caution," and that some other data suggest the diabetes epidemic might not be slowing. In any case, he says, a slowdown is not enough.

"We need to start preventing diabetes, as opposed to just slowing its development," he says. "We need to stop it."