Awareness: Calculator Gives Risk of Type 2 Diabetes

“British scientists have developed an online tool for predicting your risk of developing adult-onset diabetes. Predicting risk of type 2 diabetes in England and Wales: prospective derivation and validation of QDScore (BMJ) The researchers examined medical records of more than 2.5 million people over 15 years, excluding patients who already had diabetes or whose records were incomplete. They found nine significant risk factors: age, ethnicity, body mass index, smoking status, socioeconomic level, family history of diabetes, diagnosis of cardiovascular disease, hypertension and use of steroid drugs. They calculated the relative importance of each of these factors, and incorporated them into a formula, or algorithm, that quite accurately predicts the 10-year risk for Type 2 diabetes. Their study was published online March 17 in BMJ, and there is an interactive Web version of the algorithm at www.qdscore.org. Dr. Julia Hippisley-Cox, the lead author, said that two of its features — postal code and ethnicity — were specific to Great Britain, but that the algorithm will ‘give you a fairly accurate notion anyway,’ even without specifying those two factors. Dr. Hippisley-Cox, who is a professor of epidemiology at Nottingham University, added that for those who find they are at high risk, weight loss and exercise are essential. “Those are the interventions that have been tested,” she said. ‘If you play around with the obesity measure, you can see how your risk will change if you lose weight.’”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/24/health/24awar0.html?_r=1