Study finds 44% of people with diabetes don’t know they have it

From healio.com

Key takeaways:

• Just 55.8% of people living with diabetes globally had a diagnosis in 2023.
• Only 21.2% of all people with diabetes received optimal glycaemic concentrations that year.

An estimated 248 million people with diabetes globally were unaware they had the disease in 2023, according to a new report published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology.

The data also indicated that many people given treatment for diabetes did not receive optimal care.

       Data derived from: Stafford LK, et al. Lancet Diabetes Endocrinol. 2025;doi:10.1016/S2213-8587(25)00217-7.

“By 2050, 1.3 billion people are expected to be living with diabetes, and if nearly half don’t know they have a serious and potentially deadly health condition, it could easily become a silent epidemic,” Lauryn K. Stafford, MS, a researcher at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, said in a press release.

In the analysis, the researchers used 2000 to 2023 data from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study to determine the proportions of people living with diabetes across 204 countries and territories who were undiagnosed, diagnosed but untreated, diagnosed but receiving suboptimal glycaemic concentrations, and diagnosed and receiving optimal glycaemic concentrations. 

Stafford and colleagues reported that 55.8% (95% uncertainty interval [UI], 49.3%-62.3%) of people aged 15 years or older living with diabetes were diagnosed with diabetes in 2023, while 91.4% (UI, 88%-94.2%) of people diagnosed with the condition received treatment and 41.6% (UI, 35.7%-48.5%) of people receiving treatment had optimal glycaemic concentrations.

Ultimately, just 21.2% (UI, 17.4%-25.6%) of all people with diabetes globally in 2023 received optimal glycaemic concentrations.

High-income North America had the highest rates of diagnosis; high-income Asia Pacific had the highest rates of treatment among those with diagnosed diabetes; and southern Latin America had the highest rates of optimal blood sugar management among those treated.

The researchers noted the proportion of people diagnosed with diabetes globally increased by 8.3 percentage points from 2000 to 2023, while the proportion of those receiving treatment among those diagnosed increased by 7.2 percentage points.

The proportion of those receiving treatment who had optimal glycaemic concentrations increased by only 1.3 percentage points during the study period.

Stafford and colleagues acknowledged they did not account for lifestyle modifications that could lower glucose concentrations, while the proportion of people with diabetes with a diagnosis may have been underestimated.

The greatest number of people with undiagnosed diabetes were middle-aged adults but “diagnosis was proportionally lowest among young adults and increased with age,” the researchers wrote.

“Young adults continue to face challenges in accessing health care services including cost barriers, health insurance illiteracy and gaps in coverage, a lack of agency in health-care decision making, and a lack of trust in health systems globally,” they explained. “Further efforts to reduce under-diagnosis of diabetes among younger adults are needed, although in limited-resource settings, the cost of more expansive screening programs will need to be balanced with the capacity of the health system to expand treatment and effective glycemic management.”

https://www.healio.com/news/primary-care/20250909/about-50-of-people-living-with-diabetes-are-unaware-they-have-it