Population Study Examines Role of Sugar Availability in Diabetes Prevalence

A recent study has purportedly linked increased sugar availability to the prevalence of type 2 diabetes among overall populations. Sanjay Basu, et al., “The Relationship of Sugar to Population-Level Diabetes Prevalence: An Econometric Analysis of Repeated Cross-Sectional Data,” PLOS One, February 2013. Researchers with Stanford University, the University of California, Berkeley, and University of California, San Francisco, apparently used nutritional and economic data provided by the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization, International Diabetes Federation and World Bank to examine whether “alternations in sugar intake can account for difference in diabetes prevalence in overall populations” from 175 countries.

The findings evidently showed that “every 150 kcal/person/day increase
in sugar availability (about one can of soda per/day) was associated with
increased diabetes prevalence by 1.1% (p <0.001)” after controlling for other
food types, conditions such as obesity, and socioeconomic variables. In
particular, the study’s authors reported that “no other food types yielded
significant individual associations with diabetes prevalence,” and that the
relationship between sugar and diabetes incidence in these populations
appeared dose-dependent, with longer exposure to high sugar linked with
higher prevalence of the disease. They also purportedly found that obesity
“appeared to exacerbate, but not confound, the impact of sugar availability
on diabetes prevalence, strengthening the argument for targeted public
health approaches to excessive sugar consumption.”

“In summary, population-level variations in diabetes prevalence that are
unexplained by other common variables appear to be statistically explained
by sugar,” concluded the researchers, who noted that their work did not
distinguish between sugar, high-fructose corn syrup and other sweeteners.
“This finding lends credence to the notion that further investigations into
sugar availability and/or consumption are warranted to further elucidate the
pathogenesis of diabetes at an individual level and the drivers of diabetes at a
population level.”