The American Diabetes Association Diabetes Research Perspective

The burden of diabetes is enormousand escalating at an alarming rate(1–3). Nearly 26 million Americans have the disease, including over 10 % of the total adult population and over 25% of the population aged 65 years and older. While most of those individuals have type 2 diabetes, nearly 1million Americans have type 1 diabetes. An additional 79 million American adults have prediabetes, which, when added to those with diabetes, sug-gests that nearly half of the adult population currently has impaired glucose metabolism (1). If present trends continue, as many as one in three American adults will be diag-nosed with diabetes by 2050; the major-ity of cases will include older adults and