NEW YORK, Jan. 9 (UPI) -- An estimated 800,000 New York City adults have diabetes and city health officials say it has becoming epidemic.
Diabetes is the only major disease in the city that is growing, both in the number of new cases and the number of people it kills, The New York Times reported.
Within a generation or so, doctors fear, a wave of new cases could overwhelm the public health system.
The percentage of diabetics in the city is nearly one-third higher than in the rest of the nation. New cases have been cropping up close to twice as fast as cases nationally and health officials estimate nearly one-third of adults do not know they have it.
New York City has large numbers of the poor and obese, who are at higher risk. It has a growing population of Latinos, who get the disease in disproportionate numbers, and of Asians, who can develop it at much lower weights than people of other races, the newspaper said.
The American Diabetes Association says the disease could lower the average life expectancy of Americans for the first time in more than a century.
