Prevalence of Diabetes Mellitus (DM) and its risk factors among permanently settled tribal individuals in tribal and urban area in northern state of Sub-Himalayan region of India

INTRODUCTION:  Effect of urban environment on to development of Diabetes Mellitus (DM) and its risk factors is studied but has ecological fallacy due to their study designs. In order to above mentioned limitation the present study was carried out. The objective of the study is to assess the prevalence of DM and associated lifestyle related risk factors in traditional tribal individual residing in tribal area and migrated persons of same tribe to urban area of sub-Himalayan northern state of India.

METHODS:  Population based cross-sectional study. 

RESULTS: Total of 8000 individuals (Tribal: 4000; Urban: 4000) were recruited. Overall, among urban tribal the prevalence of central obesity

(59.0%), overweight (29.3%), stage 1 (22.8%) and stage 2 (5.3%) hypertension, DM (fasting: 7.8%; OGTT: 8.5%) (p=0.00) was significantly higher than the tribal of tribal area. Based on OGTT, the prevalence of DM was found to be 9.2% among central obese tribal of urban and 6.7% of tribal area (p=0.00). DM showed a significant high prevalence among urban tribal with

pre-hypertension (Urban: 8.3%: Tribal: 2.9%; p=0.00), stage-1 (Urban: 14.1%: Tribal: 8.7%; p=0.00) and stage-2 (Urban: 17.5%: Tribal: 13.9%; p=0.59) hypertension.

CONCLUSIONS: Urban environment showed a changing lifestyle and high prevalence of DM among tribal migrated urban tribal as compare to traditional tribal.