• Indians should develop their own medical guidelines to tackle ailments like diabetes and heart disease, as the protocols currently used in India to treat them are more suited to westerners, says a latest International Journal of Obesity study.
• Experts say Indians face a higher risk of diabetes and heart disease due to dietary habits and lifestyle than Americans and Europeans, yet much of treatment protocols for these diseases are borrowed from the West.
• The study says prevention and management strategies for such disorders should be more aggressive and tailored for Indians because of the differences between two ethnic groups — Indians and Caucasians.
• Dr A Misra and L Khurana’s review on “Obesity-related non-communicable diseases: South Asians v/s White Caucasians” provides a comprehensive view of how differences (physiological, biochemical and attitudinal factors) between the two ethnic groups may lead to diseases like diabetes, hyper-tension and cholesterol-related ailments among South Asians.
• Imbalanced nutrition, physical inactivity, perinatal adverse events and genetic differences are also important contributory factors,” says the review.
• It says recent guidelines advocating lower cut-offs of obesity and abdominal obesity for South Asians as compared with international guidelines are expected to help physicians in better and more effective preventive management.
• Dr Misra, chairman of Fortis Hospital’s diabetes and metabolic disease centre, says, “This is the first study of its kind that gives a complete picture of the risks, development of disease and associated complications.” He said Indians are several times at risk of developing these problems compared to Americans or Europeans. “There are hardly any national guidelines on prevention and management of obesity-related diseases. We should become aggressive on these fronts.”
• Mumbai’s Lilavati Hospital endocrinologist Dr Shashank Joshi said the study is relevant as Indians have not been medically recognized. “We need treatment, prevention and screening methods and medicines suited to our body types,” said Dr Joshi, also the president of All-India Association of Advancement for Research in Obesity. “It is time we have national policy guidelines on treatment, etc, suited to Indians.”

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