Kuwait Diabetes Epidemiological Study Diabetes high risk Follow up study (KADEM)

Kuwait and the Gulf Region lack large longitudinal studies that identify risk factors dictating the onset of prediabetes and the progression to diabetes. The Kuwait Diabetes Epidemiology Program (KDEP), previously carried out at Dasman Diabetes Institute, was designed to develop a research dataset providing a random sampling of the Kuwaiti population. The dataset contained primarily epidemiology data for healthy, prediabetic and diabetic individuals; and was designed to serve as a resource for research and prevention programs on obesity, diabetes, and metabolic syndrome. The KDEP data supported research studies at DDI to delineate risk factors for metabolic disease from the views of genetics, biochemistry, immunology and epidemiology. One of the main limitations of the KDEP study was that it only captured a cross-sectional view of the participants in terms of diabetes status. In the current study we aim to perform a follow up on the non-diabetic KDEP cohort participants to enrich it with detailed physiological, genetic, biochemical and environmental data and thereby to establish an association between the development of diabetes and multidimensional risk factors. We will also recruit family members of the KDEP participants to better identify familial patterns in risk factors. The outcome of this effort will immediately serve as a scientific baseline for developing prevention strategies for control and management of obesity, diabetes and associated complications such as cardiovascular disease. Given the magnitude of the social and economic burden of diabetes on the Kuwaiti population, longitudinal data from the KDEP Follow-up study should play an important role in establishing the incidence of T2D progression in non-diabetic participants that were enrolled in the initial study as well as of progression to diabetes complications. This will have a positive impact on the population by providing clinicians with data to better target their patient management and by supporting policy and decision makers in developing comprehensive health promotion programs to control these diseases at the national level.