The rate of diabetes in the Republic will soar by 37 per cent by 2015 because of obesity, a public health body predicted today.
The prediction is contained in a report published by the Institute of Public Health that also forecasts a 26 per cent rise in the disease in Northern Ireland in the 2005-2015 period.
By 2015, the number of people on the entire island with diabetes will be 278,000, the report says. It says an increase in obesity is the key factor in the rise in type 2 diabetes in adults and recommends that urgent steps be taken set up a diabetes register.
Making Diabetes Count: What does the future hold?, is the second such report carried out by the Irish Diabetes Prevalence Working Group.
In 2005, an estimated 5.4 per cent of adults in the North and 4.7 per cent in the Republic had either type 1 or 2 diabetes. The condition can cause serious health complications or even death if not diagnosed and managed.
Type 1 diabetes means the body makes no insulin, the hormone that regulates blood sugar levels. It is most commonly diagnosed before the age of 35, and sufferers must take synthetic insulin because their bodies do not make it naturally.
In type 2 diabetes the body makes some insulin but the blood sugar levels need to be carefully monitored and controlled with drugs. It is more common in older people.
New drugs have been developed to control type 2 diabetes effectively. One Irish-based pharmaceutical firm recently launched a drug which it claims can treat type 2 diabetes in a once-a-day dose without the same side effects as other diabetes drugs.
Dr Kevin Balanda, associate director of the IPH, said: "Taking into account population change and assuming the most realistic scenario that obesity rates will continue to rise in the way it has over the last decade or so, the forecast is that the population prevalence of diabetes in adults in 2015 will be 6.3 per cent or 84,226 people in Northern Ireland and 5.6 per cent or 193,944 people in the Republic.
"This represents an increase of just over 17,100 in Northern Ireland and 52,800 adults for the Republic respectively between 2005 and 2015. The vast majority of this increase is for type 2 diabetes and it is clear to us from our research that an increase in obesity is the key driver of changes in the prevalence of type 2 diabetes in the adult population," Dr Balanda said.
The report recommends setting up a comprehensive all-Ireland system to monitor the prevalence of obesity and the factors that influence it.
It also suggests population studies should be undertaken to find out the prevalence of type 1 and type 2 diabetes among children in the 0-19 age group, and separately in the adult population aged 20 and over.