A new study found that the rate of new cases of diabetes in the UK rose by 74 per cent between 1997 and 2003, and has now overtaken the rate in North America, which has one of the highest incidences of diabetes in the world. The study looked at new and existing cases of type 1 and type 2 diabetes in the UK, using data from the Health Improvement Network database between 1996 and 2005.

The researchers found that over those ten years, 42,642 people in the UK were diagnosed either with type 1 or type 2 diabetes. Type 1 usually affects younger people, and type 2 usually develops later in life due to being obese or overweight, but in recent years diabetes patients have been getting younger, some as young as seven.

The results showed that the overall prevalence of diabetes went up from 2.8 per cent of the population in 1996 to 4.3 per cent in 2005, equal to an annual rise of just under 5 per cent and an increase of 54 per cent over the decade. The prevalence was found to be 29 per cent higher among men than among men.

The rise is predominantly due to a rise in type 2 cases: new cases of type 1 have remained much the same every year for those ten years, but type 2 new cases went up from 2.6 to 4.31 cases per 1,000 patient years, equivalent to a rise of 69 per cent over the decade, and rising even more rapidly in the latter part: by 74 per cent between 1997 and 2003.