Editor's Choice Main Category: Diabetes Article Date: 10 May 2012 - 9:00 PDT

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George L. King, M.D., Chief Scientific Officer at Joslin Diabetes Center and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS), explained:

In the May 2012 edition of Diabetes Care, Dr. King, together with a team of diabetes specialists, published a report highlighting study findings that were presented in September 2011 at an international symposium held in Honolulu.

The researchers gathered evidence on the Asian American population, those born in the United States, as well as immigrants from several East Asian countries. In addition, they investigated the incidence of diabetes in Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders.

Even though immigration patterns and lifestyle adaptations to U.S. culture vary significantly among these groups, common threads and new insights are emerging. According to the researchers, there are considerable differences in how diabetes affects the body's chemistry, how to view body weight, and why standard diabetes tests may not be reliable in people of Asian decent.

Dr. William C. Hsu, M.D., an assistant professor of medicine at MHS, who with Dr. King co-directs the Asian American Diabetes Initiative at Joslin, explained:

Dr. Hsu, together with a team of experts, wrote a second report also published in the same edition of Diabetes Care. The team focused on the pathophysiology (disease process) of diabetes.

People of Asian decent are around 5 to 10 times less likely than people of European descent to develop type 1 diabetes. However, genetic markers and blood factors usually associated with type 1 diabetes are only present in 30% of patients of Asian descent, making it more difficult to diagnose the disease.

Therefore, solely relying on standard diabetes tests would result in a large percentage of Asians with the disease being misdiagnosed.

Read more from the original source:
Diagnosing And Treating Diabetes In Asian Patients - Unique Physiology Is Key