Linguistics

Demography

Philosophy

Endocrinology

Environmental health

Population

Meta-analysis

Internal medicine

Sociology

Medicine

Tamil

Rural area

Pathology

Diabetes mellitus

Annals of Epidemiology

India has experienced a recent sharp increase in diabetes/pre-diabetes. We conducted a systematic-review and meta-analyses to describe the most recent prevalence and trends of pre-diabetes/diabetes in urban and rural India. MethodsA literature search was conducted in PubMed and Scopus databases for population-based studies describing prevalence of diabetes/pre-diabetes in urban/rural populations. Trends were analysed in rural and urban settings overall, genderwise and statewise. The study reports data from 1,778,706 adults in India (69-studies), from surveys conducted from 1972-2017. Prevalence of diabetes increased in both rural and urban India from 2.4% and 3.3% in 1972 to 15.0% and 19.0% respectively in year 2015-2019. This was independently observed in both genders. Similar increasing prevalence was observed for pre-diabetes, overall and in both genders. In the latest decade (2010-2019) rural and urban prevalence was highest in states of Goa (17.4%) and Tamil Nadu (24.0%) respectively. Statewise analysis observed a wide disparity in prevalence between the North and the South of India. Pooled estimates show a relatively high burden of diabetes and pre-diabetes in rural and urban India, with narrowed urban-rural gap. Hence, it is important to plan urgent primary and secondary prevention strategies to minimize further increase in areas with high prevalence.

Prevalence and trends of the diabetes epidemic in urban and rural India: A pooled systematic review and meta-analysis of 1.7 million adults