Adiposity and diabetes in China: the China Kadoorie Biobank study of 500,000 men and women

Despite the rapid increase in both adiposity and diabetes in China, substantial uncertainty remains about the relationship between these two conditions in the population. Using data from the China Kadoorie Biobank study of 0.5 million adults recruited during 2004-8 from 10 diverse areas of China, this thesis examines the associations of different adiposity measures (overall adiposity: BMI and percentage body fat; central adiposity: waist circumference, waist-hip ratio, and waist-height ratio) with type 2 diabetes prevalence and incidence. To assess the quality of diagnosis, a separate event-verification study was conducted in ~1,000 reported diabetes cases. Overall at baseline, the mean age of the analysed participants was 52 years, 41% were men, 32% had a BMI≥25 kg/m2 (4% ≥30 kg/m2) and 5.2% had self-reported or screen-detected diabetes. Both cross-sectional and prospective analyses of well-characterised diabetic cases (26,622 prevalent and 2,910 incident cases) showed that adiposity is strongly positively associated with diabetes (pThis thesis is not currently available in ORA