People who belong to the category of Obese Class 1 of the body mass index (hereinafter, “BMI”) are more susceptible to diabetes than people within normal weight range by 50 percent. People who belong to the category of Obese Class 2 are twice as likely to develop diabetes.

Body mass index is defined as an individual's body weight divided by the square of his or her height. A BMI of 18.5 to 24.9 is classified as Normal, while a BMI of 25 to 29.9 is classified as Obese Class 1 and a BMI of 30 or over as Obese Class 2.

Professors YOO Keun-young, KANG Daehee and PARK Sue Kyung of the SNU College of Medicine suggested new guidelines for Asian diabetes occurrences, to replace the previous medical theories and practices on the relation between obesity and diabetes which were mainly based on Caucasians. Professor Yoo has stressed before the importance of establishing a different scientific standard of BMI for Asians.

To discover the relationship between obesity and diabetes among Asians, Professors Yoo, Kang and Park have studied 930,000 Asians from 7 different countries and 18 different cohorts for the last 10 years. They found that Asians with a BMI of 27.5 to 29.9 have a 50 percent higher chance of being diagnosed with diabetes than Asians with a BMI of 22.5 to 24.9, while Asians with a BMI of 32.5 to 34.9 are twice as likely to develop diabetes than the latter group.

Although there were no remarkable differences between the occurrence of diabetes in males and females, it was found that Asians under the age of 50 were far more likely to develop diabetes due to weight problems than Asians over the age of 60.

The results of the study showed that the diabetes occurrence rate among Asians is 3.2 percent. China had the lowest rate, which was 0.8 percent. On the other end, Singapore had the highest rate, 6.6 percent, and South Korea’s diabetes rate was approximately 3.8 percent.

It is a well known fact that obese people have a general tendency to be more susceptible to weight-induced diseases such as diabetes. But previous studies have been performed mainly on Europeans and Americans whose physical structure is very different from that of most Asians. Obesity and diabetes have been two of the most rapidly increasing illnesses in Asian countries over the past decade, and there have been constant criticisms of the lack of a detailed standard for the correlation of obesity and diabetes in Asians.

The WHO has announced that there are approximately 1,000,000,000 people who are overweight, and 3,000,000 obese people. Various studies have proven that obesity leads to a higher risk of incurring high blood pressure, diabetes, strokes, breast cancer, colorectal cancer and prostate cancer.

This study, which was carried out on an international level, was mainly overseen by the Korean Multi-center Cohort (KMCC), an organization Professor Yoo and other professors started in 1993. Professor Paolo Boffeta of Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York City oversaw this research.

The results of this study have received international acclaim, and further information on this research has been published in the June 22, 2011 issue of PLoS ONE.

Written by LEE Hee Un, SNU English Editor, heeun0221@hotmail.com
Proofread by Brett Johnson, SNU English Editor