Aims/hypothesis To estimate the prevalence and incidence of diabetes mellitus and impaired glucose regulation (IGR) in a Chinese population aged 20-94 years. Subjects and methods A group of 5,628 randomly selected adults, aged 20-94 years, living in the Huayang and Caoyang communities in Shanghai, China, were investigated between 1998 and 2001. During 2002-04, 2,666 subjects were followed up. All the participants underwent anthropometric measurements, blood biochemical analyses and a 75-g OGTT. Results Based on the 2000 census data of China, the agestandardised prevalences were 6.87% for diabetes and 8.53% for IGR at baseline. More than two in five cases with diabetes were undiagnosed. The age-adjusted prevalence of diabetes and IGR increased with age. The ageadjusted prevalences of hypertension, dyslipidaemia and overweight in males were significantly higher (p<0.001) than in females. The 3-year cumulative incidence rates of diabetes and IGR were 4.96 and 11.10%, respectively. The relative risk of developing diabetes was significantly higher in subjects with IGR than in subjects with NGT (p<0.001). Conclusions/interpretation The prevalence and incidence rates for diabetes or IGR have increased dramatically over the last decades, especially in younger age groups. A large proportion of cases are undiagnosed. We strongly recommend that population-based diabetes screening programmes should be implemented and generalised for younger people.

Objectives: Osteocalcin, a bone-derived protein, has recently been reported to affect energy metabolism. We investigated the relationship between serum osteocalcin and parameters of adiposity, glucose tolerance, and lipid profile in Chinese subjects. Methods: Serum osteocalcin was measured by electrochemiluminescence immunoassay in 254 men (128 with newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and 126 with normal glucose tolerance (NGT)), 66 premenopausal women (33 with T2DM and 33 with NGT) as well as 180 postmenopausal women (92 with T2DM and 88 with NGT). Their associations with parameters of adiposity, glucose tolerance, and lipid profile were examined. Results: Serum osteocalcin concentrations in diabetic patients were significantly lower than those in NGT subjects after adjusted for age, gender, and body mass index (PZ0.003). Postmenopausal women had higher osteocalcin concentrations than premenopausal women and men (both P!0.001). Multiple stepwise regression analysis showed that age, %fat, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, fasting plasma glucose, and fasting serum insulin were independently associated with osteocalcin in men (P!0.05). Age and HbA1c were independently correlated with osteocalcin in postmenopausal women. Besides age and HbA1c, serum triglyceride was also an independent factor influencing osteocalcin in premenopausal women. In addition, osteocalcin was also positively associated with homeostasis model assessment of b-cell function. Furthermore, multiple logistic regression analysis demonstrated that osteocalcin was independently associated with T2DM. Conclusions: Serum osteocalcin was closely associated with not only fat and glucose metabolism but also with lipid metabolism.

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Results The area under the receiver operating characteristics curve for detecting undiagnosed diabetes was 0.856 (95% confidence interval 0.828 to 0.883) for HbA 1c alone and 0.920 (0.900 to 0.941) for fasting plasma glucose alone. Very high specificity (96.1%, 95% confidence interval 95.5% to 96.7%) was achieved at an HbA 1c threshold of 6.3% (2 SD above the normal mean). Moreover, the corresponding sensitivity was 62.8% (57.1% to 68.3%), which was equivalent to that of a fasting plasma glucose threshold of 7.0 mmol/l (57.5%, 51.7% to 63.1%) in detecting undiagnosed diabetes. In participants at high risk of diabetes, the HbA 1c threshold of 6.3% showed significantly higher sensitivity (66.9%, 61.0% to 72.5%) than both fasting plasma glucose ≥7.0 mmol/l (54.4%, 48.3% to 60.4%) and HbA 1c ≥6.5% (53.7%, 47.6% to 59.7%) (P<0.01). Conclusions An HbA 1c threshold of 6.3% was highly specific for detecting undiagnosed diabetes in Chinese adults and had sensitivity similar to that of using a fasting plasma glucose threshold of 7.0 mmol/l. This optimal HbA 1c threshold may be suitable as a diagnostic criterion for diabetes in Chinese adults when fasting plasma glucose and oral glucose tolerance tests are not available.