Who is most likely to get type 2 diabetes?

Who is most likely to get type 2 diabetes?

Anne Peters, MD, FACP, CDE (Professor and Director of Clinical Diabetes Programs, USC Keck School of Medicine) gives expert video advice on: What causes type 2 diabetes?; Does type 1 diabetes only occur in childhood?; Is one type of diabetes worse than the other? and more...

People who are the most genetically prone to get type 2 diabetes are African Americans, Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans. There's a fairly large list, but the most important thing is to know your family history. I see lots of Eastern Europeans who have type 2 diabetes that runs in their family. So, if you have anybody in your family that has diabetes of any type, that means that you're at risk for getting it yourself. The other thing, though, that I think is incredibly important is that we can prevent type 2 diabetes if it's picked up early. So, anybody who has a child with a risk for type 2 diabetes, anyone with a history of type 2 diabetes in themselves, needs to look at their kids. What we're seeing now is that parents who have diabetes are passing it to their children, and their children are getting it at younger and younger ages. So, I look at this as a family disease, and everybody in the family needs to be involved in having a healthier lifestyle, eating better, and basically preventing type 2 diabetes from happening.