TOPLINE:

Among household members of adults with prediabetes, 64.6% of adults and 35.0% of children had at least one risk factor for diabetes, with overweight or obesity being the most common.

METHODOLOGY:

• Previous research suggests that a diagnosis of diabetes within a family can increase the awareness of risk factors in the household; however, most studies have focused on spouses or partners, often missing children and other household members who may also be at high risk.
• Researchers identified adults with prediabetes (fasting plasma glucose levels, 100-125 mg/dL or A1c levels, 5.7%-6.4%) and their coinsured household members (aged ≥ 10 years) using electronic health records and administrative data to assess diabetes risk factors among household members.
• They included 356,626 adults with prediabetes (mean age, 50.5 years; 51.7% women; 58.5% with obesity); 51.8% lived in multi-resident households and 364,563 co-residing household members (mean age for adults, 41.5 years; mean age for children, 10.2 years) were identified.
• Demographics, enrollment, neighborhood, and healthcare utilization data were obtained for both adults with prediabetes and their household members.
• For adults, diabetes risk factors included BMI ≥ 25, a history of gestational diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia, cardiovascular disease, or laboratory evidence of prediabetes. For children aged 10-17 years, diabetes risk factors were overweight (age- and sex-specific BMI ≥ 85th percentile) or obesity (age- and sex-specific BMI ≥ 95th percentile).

TAKEAWAY:

• Over three quarters of the multi-resident households had at least one household member with additional diabetes risk factors.
• Diabetes risk factors were present in 64.6% of adult household members and 35.0% of children, with overweight or obesity being the most common (54.9% in adults and 34.1% in children).
• Furthermore, dysglycemia was found in 32.3% of adult household members, with 20.3% showing prediabetes and 12.0% having evidence of diabetes.

IN PRACTICE:

“Our study highlights that diabetes risk is clustered within households, however, very few studies and health system prevention programs enroll households/families reflecting a missed opportunity for population-level diabetes prevention,” the authors wrote.

SOURCE:

This study was led by T. Thomas, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California. It will be presented at the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) Annual Meeting in Vienna, Austria, September 15-19, 2025.

LIMITATIONS:

This abstract did not discuss any limitations.

DISCLOSURES:

This study was supported by grants from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

This article was created using several editorial tools, including AI, as part of the process. Human editors reviewed this content before publication.