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Diabetes could become the defining issue of this generation with an explosion in the disease's prevalence across the globe over the last three decades, a new study suggests.

The number of adults worldwide with diabetes has jumped to an estimated 347 million; more than double what it was 30 years ago, one of the study's authors Majid Ezzati told Â鶹ӰÊÓ Channel.

Much of that increase is due to aging demographics — since diabetes typically hits in middle age — and population growth. But most of it, however, has been fuelled by rising obesity rates.

"Obesity is probably the biggest part of this story," said Ezzati, chair of global environmental health at Imperial College London.

Ezzati noted that the figures don't count the generations of overweight children and young adults who have yet to reach middle age and could create a massive burden on health systems.

"We need national as well as global strategies to try to use all of the tools that governments have at their disposal," Ezzati said in a phone interview from London, England.

Federal governments should review food regulation, pricing and distribution of subsidies, he suggested. On the municipal level, Ezzati proposes that local shops should be required to stock certain amounts of fresh produce.

"Every level of government and policy making has a role to get people involved and provide incentives for a healthier diet," he said.

Numbers stable in Western Europe

With the number of diabetic adults climbing across the globe, the study suggests that the disease is no longer limited to rich countries and is now a worldwide problem.

Still, despite growing waistlines in and around Britain, there was only a slight rise in the number of diabetics in Western Europe.

Experts couldn't pinpoint the reason why the number of diabetics remained relatively stable in Western Europe. Some said it could be due to a number of factors including worse detection of the disease, genetic differences or the possibility that Europeans were better at getting heavy people to reduce their chances of developing diabetes.

Women in Singapore, France, Italy and Switzerland remained relatively slim and had virtually no change in their diabetes rates. Numbers also stayed flat in sub-Saharan Africa, central Latin America and wealthy Asian countries.

Countries where the number of diabetic adults rose the fastest include Cape Verde, Samoa, Saudi Arabia, Papua New Guinea and the United States.

Canada and New Zealand also saw a rapid spike in the number of adults with Type 2 diabetes, according to Ezzati.

Type 2 is the most common type of diabetes and is often tied to obesity. It develops when the body doesn't produce enough insulin to break down glucose, inflating blood sugar levels.

The disease can be managed with diet, exercise and medication but chronically high blood sugar levels causes nerve damage, which can result in kidney disease, blindness and amputation.

Researchers examined 199 countries and territories

For their survey, Ezzati and his colleagues reviewed 150 national health surveys and studies that tracked Type 2 diabetes in adults older than 25 in 199 countries and territories.

They used a method called "modeling" to estimate cases for another 92 countries.

The researchers calculated there were 347 million people worldwide with diabetes. In 1980, there were 153 million.

Their figures, however, come with a big margin of error, ranging from 314 million to 382 million. A previous study using different methodology estimated there were 285 million people with diabetes in 2010.

The new study was paid for by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Health Organization.

With files from The Associated Press