Diabetes Screening Should Start at Age 30 If There is a Hereditary Risk

JAKARTA - Internal medicine specialist in the Endocrine, Metabolic and Diabetes division, Cipto Mangunkusumo Hospital, Faculty of Medicine, University of Indonesia, dr. Farid Kurniawan, SpPD, PhD said that diabetes screening can start from the age of 30, especially if you have family risk factors such as parents or siblings.

"In general, at the age of 30, we recommend checking blood sugar. Later, if the blood sugar results are outside normal limits, we will confirm with several tests," said Farid in a health discussion about diabetes in Jakarta, reported by Antara, Sunday (12/11/2023) .

He said screening could also be done on people who are overweight, have high blood pressure and have a smoking habit.

This is because the age most people suffer from diabetes is usually over 40 years, or the middle age is between 30 and 60 years. For this reason, examinations need to be carried out to create awareness that even at a young age you are not necessarily free from diabetes.

The doctor who completed his studies at the University of Indonesia said that the latest data on the prevalence of diabetes in 2018 shows that 9 out of 10 people in Indonesia suffer from diabetes or around 8.9 percent. But unfortunately 3 out of 4 diabetes sufferers or as many as 75 percent are undiagnosed.

Therefore, a series of detection procedures were also carried out as an effort to reduce premature death rates due to diabetes in Indonesia.

"Yesterday, the Ministry of Health advocated for their plan to increase screening of diabetes sufferers in order to reduce the premature death rate for diabetes in Indonesia," said Farid.

Apart from that, Farid also revealed that children aged under five years and up to 11 years old are also susceptible to type 1 diabetes due to damage to pancreatic beta cells or the pancreatic gland in the body which cannot produce enough insulin. This causes blood sugar in the body to increase.

Newborn babies can even suffer from diabetes, which is called Neonatal Diabetes.