The risk of diabetes is "very high" for all Americans, according to data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, collected between 1999 and 2002. The survey, designed to observe the effect of blood glucose abnormalities (a condition researchers called prediabetes) on overall health, measured the lifetime risk of 3,030 patients without diabetes between the ages of 18 and 84, according to body mass index. For an 18-year-old adult of normal weight, the average lifetime risk of diabetes is 19.8% in males and 17.1% in females. Risk increases according to body mass index, ranging from 29.7% and 35.4% for overweight men and women, respectively, to 70.3% and 74.4% for very obese men and women. Prediabetic patients had a high blood pressure rate of 48.3% (compared with 31% in patients without prediabetes) and were more susceptible to obesity and high cholesterol. Researchers believe that early-life efforts to curb obesity would lower the lifetime risk of diabetes.

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