There is a difference between the rates of type 2 diabetes depending on socioeconomic status, and experts believe this is due to factors related to lifestyle. For the study, an international team of researchers wanted to assess the link between socioeconomic status and several major risk factors for type 2 diabetes, and so looked at long-term data of roughly 7,200 British civil servants. They assessed socioeconomic status by the criteria of participants’ job position and associated education, salary, social status and level of responsibility at work. The lives of participants were followed for an average of 14 years, and during that time over 800 people in the study were diagnosed with diabetes.
The results were that the risk of developing diabetes was 1.86 times greater for those in the lowest job category than those in the highest job category. 53% of this difference was accounted for by health behaviours, such as smoking, alcohol consumption, diet and physical activity, and body mass index, which is a measure of body fat based on height and weight. BMI alone counted for 20% of the difference and the authors declared it the single most important factor, according to a journal news release.
The authors concluded that the research should lead those responsible to take further action, as they said: ‘Given the increasing burden of type 2 diabetes and the observed increase in social inequalities in prevalence of type 2 diabetes, further efforts to tackle these factors are urgently needed’.