PEOPLE of south Asian origin tend to have higher levels of blood sugar than white Europeans, a study has shown.

Researchers at the University of Leicester looked at 1,352 people from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, as well as 4,688 white Europeans.
They found that south Asians tended to have higher levels of three measures of blood sugar, even after risk factors that influence sugar levels had been taken into account.
The findings, which are published in the journal Diabetes Care, may help to explain why south Asian have an unusually high risk of developing type-2 diabetes and tend to develop the disease at an earlier age than Caucasians.
Lead researcher Dr Samiul Mostafa, from the University of Leicester’s department of cardiovascular sciences, said: ‘Our study suggests the main measures of glucose used in diagnosis of type-2 diabetes are all higher in south Asians, independent of risk factors which cause diabetes such as obesity, blood pressure, smoking and gender.’
The expert added that south Asians ‘should be monitored more closely for type-2 diabetes’, and that more research is needed to explain why people from these countries are more likely to develop the disease.
According to Diabetes UK, type-2 diabetes often appears from the age of 25 in south Asian and black people, compared with over the age of 40 among Caucasians.              –ND