Diabetes: data introduction
The number of diagnosed cases of diabetes is likely to be an underestimate of the true number of cases. One reason is that many people may have diabetes (particularly type 2 diabetes) without being aware of it. In Scotland it is thought that around 10% of cases of diabetes remain undiagnosed.
Many people have levels of blood glucose that are abnormally raised even though they are not high enough to justify the diagnosis of diabetes. When high levels of glucose follow intake of food (or usually a test dose of glucose) this condition is called impaired glucose tolerance or impaired glucose regulation. These conditions increase the risk of diabetes, coronary heart disease and other complications of diabetes. There is little information about the prevalence of impaired glucose tolerance in Scotland.
Data on diabetes in Scotland are available from specific primary care sources (SPIRE, and the now not longer produced PTI scheme and QOF data), from secondary care (hospital admissions data) and from the Scottish Diabetes Survey.Please note: If you require the most up-to-date data available, please check the data sources directly as new data may have been published since these data pages were last updated. Although we endeavour to ensure that the data pages are kept up-to-date, there may be a time lag between new data being published and the relevant ScotPHO web pages being updated.
