(Photo : American Medical Association HQ)

Researchers published a warning in the Journal of the American Medical Association that China may face a big risk of diabetic-related complications, which may include stroke, chronic kidney disease, and other cardiovascular diseases soon if the country's government doesn't do anything to stop diabetes from becoming an epidemic.

Like Us on Facebook

As much as 12 percent of adults in the country have diabetes. Another 50 percent are already at the borderline of developing it. This only translates that around 14 million Chinese adults are diabetic, and around 494 million are in the pre-diabetic stages. Most of those who carry the disease are still not aware that they already have it.

Guang Ning, a lead researcher and vice president of Ruijin Hospital, a medical facility that's connected with the Shanghai Jiaotong University Medical School, stressed that the frequency of diabetes in the adult population of China has already exceeded India, and may soon be close to United States. He also mentioned that China may soon be the home of the biggest diabetic population in the world, although the comparison may not be so accurate.

In was in 2010 when Guang Ning and his colleagues from the China Non-communicable Disease Surveillance Group studied the occurrence of diabetes on a national scale with a population sample of around 99,000 adults.  The testing was done using a two-hour oral glucose tolerance, which is the common gold criterion for the diagnosis of the disease. The test was then rolled out on volunteers who have not reported any signs nor was diagnosed with diabetes in the past.

Results of the tests reveal that diabetes was more prevalent among men in China with 12.1 percent of the volunteers diagnosed as positive. Chinese women were not trailing far with a prevalence rate of 11 percent.  It was also found out that residents from the urban areas are more likely to develop the disease for both men and women.