Diabetes Risk Calculator

This diabetes risk calculator enables you to estimate your risk of developing diabetes over a period of 7.5 years. If you provide some basic clinical and sociodemographic data, this tool will let you know if you are in a high risk group of developing type 2 diabetes.
Read on to learn what is diabetes, how to diagnose it, and how to estimate your risk using our calculator.

If you are interested in metabolic disorders, you may also take a look at the Warsaw method calculator for insulin management.

We try our best to make our Omni Calculators as precise and reliable as possible. However, this tool can never replace a professional doctor's assessment. If any health condition bothers you, consult a physician.

Diabetes mellitus (known commonly as diabetes) is not one disease but a group of metabolic disorders which are characterized by hyperglycemia, meaning high blood sugar. Usually, doctors divide diabetes into:

• Type 1 diabetes (insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus);
• Type 2 diabetes (non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus); and
• Gestational diabetes (occurs in pregnant women).

The most common type of diabetes worldwide is type 2 diabetes, which is a lifestyle-dependent disease. This is why we should always remember that it is much better, and indeed easier, to prevent type 2 diabetes than it is to treat it. If you want to reduce your risk of diabetes, follow these instructions:

1. Maintain a healthy diet.
2. Be physically active regularly.
3. Maintain a normal body weight.
4. Avoid smoking (see: quit smoking calculator).
5. Control your blood pressure.
6. Treat your other diseases.

Type 2 diabetes rarely has any symptoms. However, in rare cases, diabetes can manifest itself as:

• Polydipsia (increased thirst);
• Polyuria (frequent and increased urination); and
• Change of body mass (increased or decreased).

According to the ADA - American Diabetes Association, there are four main ways to diagnosis diabetes:

1. A fasting plasma glucose level ≥ 7.0 mmol/l (126 mg/dl) in at least two measurements.
2. Plasma glucose ≥ 11.1 mmol/l (200 mg/dl) two hours after a 75-gram oral dose of glucose (an Oral Glucose Tolerance Test [OGTT]).
3. Symptoms of high blood sugar (listed above) and a casual plasma glucose level ≥ 11.1 mmol/l (200 mg/dl).
4. Hemoglobin A1C ≥6.5% (48 mmol/mol).

There are also two conditions which are believed to be prediabetic states. These are:

• Impaired fasting glucose (IFG) - a fasting plasma glucose level between 5.6 - 6.9 mmol/L (100 - 125 mg/dL).
• Impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) - glucose levels between 140 - 199 mg/dL (7.8 - 11.0 mmol/L) two hours after the 75 g OGTT.

If you have problems with converting between different glucose units, don't worry! Just check out our glucose units converter!

Our Diabetes Risk Calculator is based on the article Identification of Persons at High Risk for Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus: Do We Need the Oral Glucose Tolerance Test? published in 2002 in the medical journal Annals of Internal Medicine by Dr. Stern and his colleagues at the University of Texas. In their publication, they proposed a prediction tool which could predict the incidence of diabetes within 7.5 years with a high degree of accuracy. This observational study was performed on almost 3000 adults. The conclusion that the team reached was that the risk of developing diabetes is mostly associated with a patient's:

• Age;
• Sex;
• BMI;
• Ethnicity;
• Family history of diabetes;
• Fasting glucose;
• Systolic Blood Pressure; and
• HDL cholesterol.

They performed statistical analysis which revealed the most accurate equation for predicting the risk of contracting diabetes in the following 7.5 years (as a percentage risk). This is the formula that our risk of diabetes calculator uses - it looks as follows:

risk = 100 / (1 + e^(-1×((0.028 × age) + (0.661 × sex) + (0.412 × ethnicity) + (0.079 × fasting_glucose) + (0.018 × systolic_blood_pressure) - (0.039 × HDL) + (0.07 × BMI) + (0.481 × family_history) - 13.415)))

where:

• age is expressed in years;
• sex - input a value of 1 for a female and 0 for a male;
• ethnicity - input 1 if Latin American, 0 if non-Hispanic white;
• fasting_glucose - measurement of fasting glucose in mg/dL;
• SBP - systolic blood pressure in mmHg;
• HDL - high-density lipoprotein cholesterol level in mg/dL;
• BMI - body mass index in kg/m²; and
• family history - input 1 if at least one parent or sibling has diabetes, or 0 if this isn't the case.

If you are interested in learning the probability that you will contract diabetes, use our diabetes risk calculator. All you need to do is have some recent basic laboratory tests results (fasting glucose and HDL cholesterol) ready, check your blood pressure, and you can start using our diabetes calculator. Simply input the necessary information in the appropriate boxes: your age, sex, weight, height, the results of your laboratory results- HDL and fasting glucose, your average systolic blood pressure, as well as some information about your ethnic origin and family history, and that's it! You will receive your result - that is your risk of developing diabetes in the next 7.5 years.

Did you like our tool? Check out our other medical calculators - the lung cancer risk calculator and the bladder cancer risk of recurrence and progression calculator !