Soon a detailed study on 'diabesity': Doctors

A study will be conducted across India to explore better therapy to control the double-barrel menace of diabetes coupled with obesity, doctors said Thursday.

"We have found that Indian population is predisposed to obesity at a younger age and diabetes is a growing menace. The study will be ethnic-specific. We will conduct the study in south, central and north India," said Deep Goel, director, bariatric surgery, BLK Super Speciality Hospital.

"With the help of various institutions, we will start the study in a couple of months," Goel said.

The detailed study across the country on diabesity (diabetes plus obesity) will be supported by University of Dresden, Germany and Beijing Genomics Institute of China. BLK Super Speciality Hospital in the national capital is the nodal centre in India for the study.

According to the doctors, mostly affluent urban Indians are now obese and obesity is increasing rapidly among urban school children.

The populations which was under-nourished for a long time are now exposed to the overnourishment of the modern world through globalisation and westernisation, which has led to increased consumption of junk food, said Praneet Kaur, CEO, BLK Super Speciality Hospital.

"With the bad fat nutritional history of the developing world, the epidemic is exploding in developing countries. In order to address this, the study will help to explore various modalities and therapeutic interventions," Kaur said.

Indians are more vulnerable to diabetes because genetically they have a higher percentage of body fat to muscle compared to Europeans.

As per the doctors, the fat is usually deposited around the abdomen, where it interferes with insulin and increases sugar levels in the blood, causing diabetes in people with a low body mass index.

The study will also discuss about safety, durability of diabetes recovery and long- term outcome of surgical diabetes therapy.