Indian Diabetes Risk Score.

Variability is an inherent characteristic of the biological world. The globe today faces as epidemic of non-communicable diseases (NCD), which will soon surpass communicable diseases both in the developing and developed world. India is no exception, and both native and migrant Asian Indian are ethnically a particularly vulnerable race from the metabolic standpoint. However in NCD due to lack of a clear etiological agent it is heavily dependent on identifying and tackling risk factors. The risk factors like age, gender, family history are non-modifiable while others like smoking, diet, physical activity, hypertension, diabetes etc are modifiable. Thus for NCD a classic screening or preventive strategy may not work and principles of primordial prevention have to be applied. These lead to identification of “Risk Scores or Tests” like ‘Framingham Risk Score’ or criteria like cluster phenotypes viz “Metabolic Syndrome”. The classic cardiovascular risk is assessed by the Framingham risk score while diabetes is assessed by the diabetes risk score by American Diabetic Association (ADA). Both are powerful tools; but in the last decade we also saw the emergence of a new term “Metabolic Syndrome”.