In the United States, 23.7 million
people live with diabetes, says information from a report published in Diabetes Care (December 2009; 32 [12], 2225–29). In 2009, $113 billion was spent on diabetes. If current trends continue, the number of people living with diabetes could nearly double and spending could almost triple in the next 25 years. “If we don’t change our diet and exercise habits or find new, more effective and less expensive ways to prevent and treat diabetes, we will find ourselves in a lot of trouble as a population,” stated lead study author Elbert Huang, MD, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Chicago.