How many Hispanic Americans have diabetes?

Hispanic Americans are the second-largest and fastest growing minority group in the United States. In 1998, there were 30 million Hispanics in the United States, representing 11 percent of the population. By the year 2050, it is estimated that Hispanics will number 97 million and constitute 25 percent of the U.S. population.

Mexican Americans represent the largest Hispanic American subgroup, with 64.3 percent of the Hispanic population. Central and South Americans represent the second-largest Hispanic American subgroup, with 13.4 percent of the Hispanic population. The majority of Hispanic Americans live in the south-central and southwestern United States.

Table 1 provides a list of Hispanic subgroups, the percentage of the Hispanic population they each represent, and the percentage of the population that has diabetes for two age ranges.

Figure 1 shows the prevalence of diabetes in Mexican American men and women based on the most recent national study, the NHANES III survey conducted in 1988–94. The proportion of the Mexican American population that has diabetes (defined by medical history or fasting plasma glucose of 126 mg/dL or greater) rises from less than 1 percent for those younger than 20 to as high as 33 percent for women ages 60 to 74. In almost every age group, prevalence is higher among women than men.

About one-third of total diabetes among Hispanic Americans is undiagnosed. This is similar to the proportion for other racial/ethnic groups in the United States.

Prevalence in Hispanic Americans is much higher than in Americans without Hispanic ancestry. Among those ages 40 to 74 in the 1988–94 survey, the rate was 11.2 percent for non-Hispanic whites, but 20.3 percent for Mexican Americans.

source: http://diabetes.niddk.nih.gov/dm/pubs/hispanicamerican/index.htm