More than half of people at high risk for diabetes are missed under current US screening guidelines, including many African-Americans, Hispanics and those who are not overweight, researchers said on Tuesday.
The government guidelines - issued just last year - missed 55 percent of people with prediabetes or diabetes, said the study by North-western Medicine.
The 2015 guidelines, which were authored by the United States Preventive Service Task Force (USPSTF), recommend that people undergo screening for diabetes if they are aged 40 to 70 years old and are overweight or obese. "We were interested to do this study because of population trends that racial and ethnic minorities are developing diabetes at younger ages and lower weights than whites," said senior author Matthew O'Brien, assistant professor of medicine at North-western University Feinberg School of Medicine.
The findings, published in the journal PLOS Medicine, are based on electronic health record data from more than 50,000 adult patients at community health centers in the midwestern and south-western United States between 2008 and 2013.
Only half of African-American patients that developed abnormal blood glucose levels - a condition known as dysglycemia - met the screening criteria, and 37 percent of Latino patients.
"Say I'm caring for an obese 32-year-old Hispanic woman with a family history of diabetes who had gestational diabetes with a previous pregnancy," said O'Brien.