Diabetes affects men, women differently

Diabetes seems to affect men and women differently despite similar socioeconomic, biological, dietary, and lifestyle backgrounds, a recent India study has found.

Researchers conducted a cross-sectional analysis of 648,716 women and 99,565 men aged 15–49 years, whose baseline demographic, socioeconomic, clinical, and lifestyle information were retrieved. The primary outcome was the development of diabetes, defined binarily according to nonfasting blood glucose levels ≥200 mg/dL or fasting blood glucose ≥126 mg/dL.

Overall, 2.39 percent of participants had diabetes; in men and women, the respective prevalence rates were 2.63 percent and 2.35 percent, suggesting a slight sex bias. Diabetes was also more common in urban vs rural dwellers (3.48 percent vs 2.30 percent) and tended to become more frequent in older individuals (40–49 vs 15–19 years: 6.28 percent vs 0.32 percent).

Sex differences continued to persist even after taking other background factors into account. For instance, despite diabetes being more common in men, women who were of high socioeconomic status and who lived in urban areas saw higher rates of diabetes. The same was true for women who didn’t eat vegetables and who consumed eggs, chicken, or meat daily.

In contrast, men who lived in rural areas, who were nonvegetarian, who watched television almost daily, and who were obese had higher rates of diabetes than women counterparts.

“Our findings are important from a policy point of view as it affirms that socioeconomic and risk factors play different roles among different genders in diabetes in India,” the researchers said. “There is a need for gender dimension in research to understand and validate the differences in the needed interventions for diabetes control.”