Grant: Catalyst Grant: Analysis of CLSA Data

Diabetes is a life-long disease in which the body cannot make enough insulin or does not properly use the insulin it makes. Insulin is a hormone that helps the body change sugar from food into energy. Low insulin production or impaired insulin function results in glucose (sugar) building up in the blood, which over time, can cause major complications such as heart disease, kidney disease and blindness. Most individuals with diabetes go through a prediabetes state during which time blood glucose levels are higher than normal, but lower than established thresholds for diabetes itself. Physical exercise and a healthy diet may help revert prediabetes to normal glucose level and prevent progression to diabetes. Because the number of individuals with prediabetes is high and not all will develop diabetes, offering lifestyle interventions and close monitoring to all of them would waste valuable resources. Identifying those who would benefit the most from such interventions is important to inform prevention efforts. The Canadian Diabetes Risk (CANRISK) is a questionnaire based on age, sex, weight, height, waist circumference, physical activity, fruits and vegetables intake, hypertension, prior high blood sugar, given birth to a large baby, diabetes in the family, ethnicity and education to determine the risk of having diabetes. CANRISK performance to predict progression from prediabetes to diabetes is not known. We will use data from the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging to determine among the Canadian population 45-85 years old 1) the proportion of those with prediabetes who will develop diabetes over three years; and 2) the ability of CANRISK, either alone or combined with other genetic, environmental and personal factors to predict progression from prediabetes to diabetes over three years in men and in women from different Canadian regions.