It’s hard to know how to think about prediabetes, a condition in which a person’s blood sugar level is higher than normal but not high enough to qualify as full-blown diabetes. On the one hand, many people with prediabetes go on to develop diabetes, which is now the seventh-leading cause of death in the United States — but on the other hand, most don’t. Indeed, the condition is — paradoxically — both underdiagnosed and overdiagnosed, researchers say.
Confused? You’re not alone. A 2019 survey of primary care physicians showed they have limited knowledge about which patients should be screened for prediabetes, how to read lab tests to diagnose it and what to advise patients who are diagnosed.
One reason may be that five definitions — based on three types of blood-sugar tests — are in use in the United States, says Elizabeth Selvin, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg ...
