On Dec 20, 2006, the UN General Assembly passed resolution 61/225, in recognition that diabetes "poses severe risks for families, Member States and the entire world". In The Lancet, the Global Burden of Metabolic Risk Factors of Chronic Diseases Collaborating Group presents evidence that strongly supports this resolution, and reinforces the need to strengthen worldwide diabetes surveillance. Unlike the communicable disease influenza3 no worldwide surveillance network exists for diabetes, a non-communicable disease. Instead, the Collaborating Group has assembled available data (that meet appropriate quality standards) from population-based health surveys and epidemiological studies. The data were adjusted for different diabetes case definitions and glycaemic metrics, then a hierarchical Bayesian model was applied to fill in missing data for each of 199 countries and 29 years (1980-2008) by borrowing information from similar but more data-dense strata. The Bayesian model also adjusted for variation in study population coverage (national, subnational, or local community), so the data could be appropriately weighted. The result is an estimate of trends in dysglycaemia and diabetes globally, regionally, and nationally, covering the whole timecourse of the pandemic.
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