Prevalence and risk factors of diabetes among young students of a medical college in central India

Background: India is home to 69.2 million diabetics and is second only to China in these numbers. There has been a rapid increase in the prevalence of diabetes worldwide, developing countries being the worst hit. Recent studies have revealed a trend of occurrence of diabetes mellitus at a younger age.This implies morbidity and mortality due to diabetes will occur at an early age among large proportion of individuals. We aimed to determine the prevalence of diabetes mellitus among young medical students of MGIMS Sevagram and risk factors associated with diabetes.Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted between August 2010 and December 2012 in MGIMS Sevagram, a medical college located in central India. Total of 700 students, aged 17-35 years, were studied using a modified STEPs questionnaire.After an overnight fast, blood samples for fasting blood glucose and lipid profile were collected. Statistical analysis was done using STATA 13 software.Results: The prevalence of diabetes mellitus was found to be 2.36%. Impaired fasting glucose or prediabetes was present in 17.57%. Control of diabetes was very poor among study subjects as only 33.3% of diabetics had their fasting blood sugar under control. .After multivariate logistic regression analysis diabetesrisk was significantly higher among those aged >30 years {OR-11.32 (95% CI 3.43-37.32)}, those with low physical activity level {6.99 (95% CI 1.52-32.08))}, those with abnormal waist circumference {OR-3.70 (95% CI 1.07-12.81)} and those who had hypertriglyceridemia {OR-3.12 (95% CI 1.02-9.51)}.Conclusion: A significant proportion of young medical students havediabetes and prediabetes. This study is an eye-opener, as a large proportion of young medical students having diabetes are not able to control their diabetes, despite adequate knowledge and treatment opportunity. One factor which can be responsible for this problem is stressful routine through which a medical student has to go through during the training, especially during residency.