Diabetes, Prediabetes, and Glycemic Control in the United States: Challenges and Opportunities

Over the past several decades, U.S. obesity rates haveincreased dramatically. Today, more than one third of U.S. adults are obese (1). This increase has been attrib-uted to many factors (most notably, dietary changes and lack of physical activity). A concomitant increase in type 2 diabetes parallels the increased incidence of obesity. Type 2 diabetes represents more than 90 % of all diabetes cases and is associated with many complications, including neuropa-thy, retinopathy, nephropathy, and cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease. The cost of diabetes and its com-plications was estimated to be $245 billion in 2012, rep-resenting approximately 9 % of the health care costs in the United States (2). In this issue, Selvin and colleagues (3) examine the prevalence of diabetes and prediabetes as well as glycemi