However, at face value, it seems that the IDF predictions for diabetes in China in 2010 failed to take account of the true prevalences measured in 2000–2001. That subsequent diabetes prevalence measured by glucose learn more estimates in a large representative sample in 2007–20085 would be greater than the IDF prediction was perhaps entirely predictable, given that diabetes prevalence has been increasing, rather than reducing, everywhere else. Indeed, published data available in 1997 suggest that China had already experienced a three-fold rise in diabetes prevalence in the

preceding decade.8 It seems implausible to think that with increasing Westernisation in China, a factor known to influence increased diabetes prevalence, subsequent diabetes prevalence would fall as predicted by the IDF in 2010. It is possible that in setting the 2010 estimate there were concerns that the prevalence found in the 2000–2001 study was exaggerated. This seems improbable, however, given that another large prevalence study in 1995 of 29 859 subjects aged 30–64 years in Beijing found a measured diabetes prevalence of 3.63%,9,10 and is thus entirely consistent with the 5.2–5.8% prevalence found in the InterASIA study some five

to six years later given the rising diabetes rates in China at that time. Is there evidence that the apparent underestimate for China was repeated for other countries and regions? Unfortunately, the answer appears Romidepsin manufacturer to be yes. In Sri Lanka, for example, the IDF predicted an 11.5% prevalence

in 2010. This was despite a publication which showed in 2005 that true measured prevalence in 6447 subjects was 14.2% for men and 13.5% for women,11 and a rather ironic comment in the Ceylon Medical Journal in 2006 that ‘The Parvulin World Health Organization and International Diabetes Federation estimates and forecasts are much lower than the available local prevalence rates’.12 In the United Kingdom, the introduction of incentive payments in general practice led to the development of reasonably robust data on, among other things, diabetes prevalence. Thus, whilst the IDF Atlas was predicting a 4.9% prevalence in 2010, the data published annually by the NHS Information Centre, and freely available on the internet, showed that in 2008/09 the diabetes prevalence was 5.1% whereas in 2009/10 it had increased to 5.4%.13 In the Middle East, the gap between the IDF prediction and published actual prevalences may be greater. For instance in Iran, the IDF prediction for 2010 was a 6.1% prevalence,14 whereas meta-analysis of available data between 1996 and 2004 suggests that the figure in those aged >40 years was already 24% at least six years before the IDF prediction of only a quarter of that value.