Research

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South Asian patients with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) face a disproportionately higher risk of Major Cardiovascular Events (MACE) and Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) compared to White Europeans, even when South Asian patients are of normal weight or overweight status.

If you are South Asian and have Type 2 Diabetes, your risk for heart disease and kidney problems is significantly higher than that of White European patients, even if you are not overweight. Do not rely on BMI alone to gauge your health. You likely need more aggressive monitoring and management of blood pressure, lipids, and blood sugar than standard guidelines might suggest for your weight class.

GoodQualifiesHIGH confidence
During a median 7 years of follow-up, risk of MACE was significantly higher for overweight (95% CI of IRR 1.50, 2.46) and obese (95% CI of IRR 1.49, 2.43) SAs compared to their WE counterparts... Risk of CKD was higher and uniform for BMI ≥ 25 kg/m2 amongst WEs and ACs, whereas only overweight patients had significantly higher risk of CKD amongst SA [IRR 2.08 (95% CI 1.49, 2.93)].
Ebenezer S. Owusu Adjah et al. · Cardiovascular Diabetology · 2018

Why this rating

Large matched case-control study (n=69,436 cases) with longitudinal follow-up, though observational data cannot prove causality.

Source

Prevalence and incidence of complications at diagnosis of T2DM and during follow-up by BMI and ethnicity: a matched case–control analysis

Ebenezer S. Owusu Adjah et al. · Cardiovascular Diabetology · 2018

DOI 10.1186/s12933-018-0712-1

case_control · n=341626Cited 46×
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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