Diabetes rate soaring among British under-40s: Number being diagnosed with type 2 up six-fold in 20 years

These correlations are entirely to be expected.  Diabetics are big eaters and drinkers so will tend to get fat.  Diabetics are however only a small proportion of overweight people so to say that obesity causes diabetes is very poor reasoning. It would be much better founded to say that diabetes cause obesity.

 There are admissions below that the rise in diabetes may be artifactual, with doctors being REWARDED for diagnosing it!

Soaring numbers of under-40s are developing a type of diabetes linked to obesity and traditionally seen as a disease of the elderly.  A study of GPs' records found the number of young people diagnosed with type 2 diabetes rose six-fold over two decades.

The most common form of the disease, it is strongly linked to obesity and was once the preserve of the middle-aged and elderly.

Those who analysed the figures said the increase can 'almost entirely' be explained by the obesity crisis – and warned developing diabetes early raises the odds of potentially deadly complications.

Diabetics are more likely to suffer heart attacks and strokes than other people.

The condition, in which the body struggles to convert sugar to energy, also increases the risk of blindness, kidney disease and nerve and circulatory damage, which can lead to amputations. Earlier onset gives the disease time to attack the body and could bring decades of ill health.

The study of a snapshot of GPs' surgeries found that from 1991 to 1995, 577 people under 40 were diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.

But from 2006 to 2010, that soared to more than 14,000 – a more than 20-fold increase – with young women particularly likely to be diagnosed.

A large part of this rise can be explained by changes in the way data is collected, and it is estimated the true rate of diagnosis in under-40s is now around six times higher than in the 1990s, at around 25,000 new cases a year.

Obesity rates roughly doubled in the same period, with 26 per cent of adults dangerously overweight by 2010.

In a report on their findings, published in the journal Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism, the researchers said: 'Not only was the overall  incidence increasing but the proportion of people aged 40 or less rose markedly.

'This is likely to place  an increasing burden on resources and may also lead to death at a younger age.'

The researchers, from Cardiff University and the Heart of England NHS Trust in Birmingham, said the rise may be partly due to better screening, since GPs now have performance-related pay that rewards them for diagnosing sufferers.  However, they said rising obesity was the main driver.

Lead researcher Professor Craig Currie said: 'It's almost entirely obesity. How fat  you are is the top and bottom  of it.'

Dr Matt Capehorn, of the National Obesity Forum, said even children in their early teens have been diagnosed.

Some are genetically more at risk but lifestyle is the key trigger, he said, adding: 'It's still quite rare but we do see them. In the huge majority of cases type 2 diabetes develops as a consequence of being overweight. So as the weight of the nation increases, the incidence goes up too.

'The implications for NHS spending are huge. It already spends about 10 per cent of its entire budget on diabetes. It's not the diabetes that kills people but usually the heart disease they develop as a consequence.'

Professor Jason Halford, of the UK Association for the Study of Obesity, warned diabetes is the first in a chain of diseases fuelled by obesity.

He said: 'It is likely that in a few years we will see a similar epidemic of cardiovascular disease and, after that, probably an increase in a good number of cancers as well.'

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Up to half of all men given the all-clear by NHS prostate cancer tests could actually have the  disease

Tests for prostate cancer may be  incorrectly giving the all-clear to up to 50 per cent of men who have the disease, according to a study.

Experts believe thousands of patients with the disease could be missed every year because the standard biopsy techniques used at most NHS hospitals are flawed.

And thousands more perfectly healthy people could be wrongly diagnosed with the disease and undergoing needless radiotherapy or surgery, according to a study by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and University College London.

Most NHS hospitals automatically use biopsies for men with suspected prostate cancer, removing and examining tissue in an attempt to establish whether the disease is present.

More than 100,000 of these ‘blind’ biopsies are carried out every year – but experts say the procedures are inaccurate and risky.

They are instead calling for less invasive – but far more expensive – MRI and ultrasound scans to be used first, which they say could immediately and reliably give the all-clear to men without the disease, and allow doctors to carry out more accurate biopsies by pinpointing the area where a tumour is suspected.

Professor Mark Emberton, of the University College London, told the Daily Telegraph: ‘There is no other organ of the body where we carry out random “blind” biopsies without knowing where we are looking.

‘At UCLH we have been using MRI, followed by a guided biopsy for several years, but there are only a handful of hospitals in this country which do this, and that needs to change.’

The health economists who carried out the Wellcome Trust-funded study calculated that using the alternative procedure could mean a quarter of patients are given the all-clear without having a biopsy.

For every 1,000 men with suspected cancer, 250 men could have been reassured after a scan.

Of 500 of the cases in which significant disease was present, just 50 per cent were detected during the traditional biopsy, compared with 68 per cent using the MRI-guided technique.

One in 20 of those undergoing the traditional biopsy were wrongly found to have significant disease levels.

Using the MRI-guided technique, around half as many men were given a wrong diagnosis.

Sarah Willis, a health economist from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said: ‘These findings suggest that the use of MRI and ultrasound not only detects far more cases, but leads to fewer false positives, in which significant disease is wrongly diagnosed.’

Dr Kate Holmes, head of research at Prostate Cancer UK, said: ‘This early data suggests that giving men an MRI scan before a biopsy may put clinicians in a better position to tailor investigations and treatments further down the line.

'However, further research is necessary before we will know the true value of this method.’

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