Introduction: Arab populations have many similarities and dissimilarities. They share culture, language and religion but they are also subject to economic, political and social differences. The purpose of this study is to understand the causes of the rising trend of diabetes prevalence in order to suggest efficient actions susceptible to reduce the burden of diabetes in the Arab world. Method: We use principal component analysis to illustrate similarities and differences between Arab countries according to four variables: 1) the prevalence of diabetes, 2) impaired glucose tolerance (IGT), 3) diabetes related deaths and 4) diabetes related expenditure per person. A linear regression is also used to study the correlation between human development index and diabetes prevalence. Results: Arab countries are mainly classified into three groups according to the diabetes comparative prevalence (high, medium and low) but other differences are seen in terms of diabetes-related mortality and diabetes related expenditure per person. We also investigate the correlation between the human development index (HDI) and diabetes comparative prevalence (R = 0.81). Conclusion: The alarming rising trend of diabetes prevalence in the Arab region constitutes a real challenge for heath decision makers. In order to alleviate the burden of diabetes, preventive strategies are needed, based essentially on sensitization for a more healthy diet with regular exercise but health authorities are also asked to provide populations with heathcare and early diagnosis to avoid the high burden caused by complications of diabetes.

The major objectives of this work are to estimate the hypertension (HT) frequency in the east of Morocco and to study the relationship between HT, type 2 diabetes and obesity. Our sample is composed of 1628 adults aged 40 years and older, recruited voluntarily by using the convenience sampling method through 26 screening campaigns in urban and rural areas of the east of Morocco. We enumerated 516 hypertensive people (31.7%), without significant difference between women (32.5%) and men (30.2%). The known hypertensive people represent 10.1% of the whole sample. The frequency of HT, increases with age and it is more marked in rural (39.9%) than in urban areas (29%) (p < 0.001). It is significantly very high in diabetic subjects (69.9%) than among the non-diabetic ones (27.4%) (p < 0.001). The odd ratio (OR) of the diabetics to HT is 6.16 (IC95% [4.33-8.74]). Among the obese persons, HT is present at (40.8%) vs. (30.2%) among the subjects of normal weight (p < 0.05). The OR of the obese to HT is 1.6 (IC95% [1.26 - 2.04]). In conclusion, our results show a high frequency of HT in the east of Morocco; it affects nearly one third of the adult population aged 40 years and older. The relations between type 2 diabetes and obesity have also been identified and estimated.

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The objective of this research is to describe the current situation (frequencies) of obesity and diabetes mellitus (DM) and their relationship in Oujda capital of eastern Morocco and its regions, and to investigate the influences of milieu, sex and age. A sample of 1,628 individuals at least 40 years old was formed by voluntary participation using convenience sampling through 26 campaigns in urban and rural areas in late 2008. The proportion in the total sample was globally 10.2% for DM, 8.1% for impaired fasting glucose (IFG), 25.1% for obesity and 40.3% for overweight. The relative frequency of DM was slightly higher in women than in men (10.7% vs. 9.3%, not significant (NS)); for IFG it was respectively 8.7% versus 7.01% (NS). The relative frequency of DM was 1.34 times higher in urban (10.9%) than in rural areas (7.9%, P \ 0.05). It was also more elevated in obese subjects (15.9%) than in normal ones (9.7%, P \ 0.001). Obesity proportion was markedly greater in women (32.7%) than in men (11.5%, P \ 0.001). Obesity and overweight were more frequent in urban populations than in rural ones. In conclusion, our results show an alarming increasing trend in the current situation and frequencies of DM, obesity and overweight in the capital of eastern Morocco and its regions, especially for women in urban area.