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Singapore eyes highest proportion of younger diabetes patients

Xinhua, April 3, 2015 Adjust font size:

Singapore has the highest proportion of younger patients with type-2 diabetes across nine Asian territories, Channel NewsAsia reported on Friday, citing a study by the Asian Diabetes Foundation.

The two-year study polled 319 patients from Singapore, Thailand, China, the Philippines, Hong Kong, India, South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam, it said, adding that in Singapore, three in 10 had diabetes before the age of 40, the highest proportion with younger patients.

Singapore currently has 498,190 patients with type-2 diabetes, and it still poses great challenge to keep glycaemic under control among them.

"Diabetes has no symptoms. So when you are young, you don't really think it's a problem because there is no symptoms, you don' t experience pain and you are not aware of its complications," Dr. Ben Ng, consultant physician at Mount Elizabeth Novena Specialist Medical Centre told Channel NewsAsia.

"Because of that, people don't care. They think they are doing well. On top of that, many other lifestyles such as too good a diet, lack of exercise and a sedentary lifestyle all contribute to increasing weight and increasing risk of diabetes." Endi