Check if you have undiagnosed diabetes | Waco Today | wacotrib.com – Waco Tribune-Herald

Diabetes is a chronic condition that leads to serious life-threatening complications, however many people go undiagnosed and are undertreated a situation being further exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

For this reason, understanding risk factors, symptoms and the importance of early diagnosis and action is essential.

More than 34 million people in the U.S. are affected by diabetes, and one-in-five of them are undiagnosed, according to estimates from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Health services organization Cigna reports that between January 2020 and June of 2021, nearly 800 of its patients who were diagnosed with COVID-19 were found to have undiagnosed diabetes. Only 14% of those people had previously been diagnosed with pre-diabetes.

So why are so many people living with diabetes going undiagnosed? Cigna claims data shows that those at higher risk of having social or economic obstacles to health, also had a higher risk of undiagnosed diabetes and COVID-19.

As is the case with many medical conditions, timely diagnosis and treatment of diabetes is impacted by persisting health inequities that affect certain communities and populations, says Dr. Mandeep Brar, Cigna medical director and board-certified endocrinologist. Factors such as race, ethnicity, access to healthful food, education, health care coverage and language barriers, to name a few, all contribute to undiagnosed cases of diabetes.

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Check if you have undiagnosed diabetes | Waco Today | wacotrib.com - Waco Tribune-Herald