This article discusses the rationale and method of screening for diabetes in a primary care setting. It describes guidelines laid down by international organizations, while adding pragmatic suggestions based upon reality in South Asian and other developing countries.

Traditionally, screening for gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) has been done only for those women with identifiable risk factors. To determine the value of screening all pregnant women, 363 consecutive patients were tested for GDM using a glucose challenge test (GCT). The test measured plasma glucose 1 hour after administration of a 50-gram oral glucose load. Those patients with a plasma gluc...

The U.K. National Screening Committee provides criteria against which screening programs can be evaluated (http://www.nsc.nhs.uk/pdfs/ criteria.pdf). Using these criteria, screening for diabetes in the general population was deemed not to be warranted in 2001 (1) because 1) the benefits of early diagnosis and treatment had not been proved, 2) screening for diabetes to reduce cardiovascular dise...

OBJECTIVES To reconsider the aims of screening for undiagnosed diabetes, and whether screening should be for other abnormalities of glucose metabolism such as impaired glucose tolerance (IGT), or the 'metabolic syndrome'. Also to update the previous review for the National Screening Committee (NSC) on screening for diabetes, including reviewing choice of screening test; to consider what measure...

OBJECTIVE Monogenic diabetes, a young-onset form of diabetes, is often misdiagnosed as type 1 diabetes, resulting in unnecessary treatment with insulin. A screening approach for monogenic diabetes is needed to accurately select suitable patients for expensive diagnostic genetic testing. We used C-peptide and islet autoantibodies, highly sensitive and specific biomarkers for discriminating type ...

Diabetes mellitus is associated with greater risks for cardiovascular diseases (CVD). Multiple noninvasive screening tools for CVD including cardiac CT, carotid intima-media thickness test, myocardial perfusion imaging have been examined in those with diabetes, but the prognostic value of these tests vary and issues remain regarding their cost-benefit ratios, potential harms of radiation, and h...

D iabetes mellitus is a group of metabolic diseases characterized by hyperglycemia resulting from defects in insulin secretion, insulin action, or both. Type 2 diabetes, the most prevalent form of the disease, is often asymptomatic in its early stages and can remain undiagnosed for many years. The chronic hyperglycemia of diabetes is associated with long-term dysfunction, damage, and failure of...

OBJECTIVE To determine the prevalence of gestational diabetes mellitus in a large general obstetric population and its variations depending on the presence of risk factors, and to evaluate how the gestational diabetes screening strategies applied might modify the observed prevalence in the population. DESIGN A retrospective cohort study. METHODS The study population was a total of 2574 preg...

AIMS Determine the prevalence and severity of diabetic retinopathy (DR) and risk factors in a large community based screening programme, in order to accurately estimate the future burden of this specific and debilitating complication of diabetes. METHODS A cross-sectional analysis of 91,393 persons with diabetes, 5003 type 1 diabetes and 86,390 type 2 diabetes, at their first screening by the...