Diabetes Up?

Into the town hall of Oxford, Mass. (pop. 4,983) moved a team of doctors and nurses. They set up a laboratory in the basement, and began to take blood and urine tests of Oxford's citizens. Soon word spread through the town that the U.S. Public Health Service had chosen Oxford (birthplace of Nurse Clara Barton) as a typical town for the first intensive U.S. hunt for undiagnosed diabetes.

Last week Oxford--and the U.S.--got the worrisome news. The investigators had tested 3,516 men, women & children. Two percent of the people of Oxford had diabetes. Of these, nearly half (30 people) had no idea that they were diabetics. A majority were in comparatively late stages of the disease, with acute but unrecognized symptoms (cramps in the arms & legs, loss of weight, intense itching, fatigue, overeating, unusual thirst).

As reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association by PHS Drs. Hugh L. C. Wilkerson and Leo P. Krall, the study confirmed what many specialists have suspected: that diabetes is on the increase in the U.S. and is far more widespread than official reports have indicated. If the figures for Oxford are representative of the nation as a whole, there are some 2,800,000 U.S. diabetics (top previous estimate: 1,500,000) -- and half of them don't know it.

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