Nearly half of people with diabetes around the world are unaware of their condition, according to a new study.
Globally, an estimated 44% of people 15 and older with diabetes didn't know they had the life-threatening disease, researchers reported Monday in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology.
"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," lead investigator Lauryn Stafford said in a news release. She's a researcher at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Worse, fewer than half of people who know they're diabetic have their blood sugar levels under control, researchers found.
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