• Posted August 19, 2025

Diabetes Risk Clusters In Households

Diabetes risk appears to cluster in households, a new study says.

Three-quarters of people at risk for developing type 2 diabetes are living under the same roof as another person who either already has diabetes or carries risk factors for the condition, researchers will report at the upcoming annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes.

“Many of these people will have been diagnosed with prediabetes or type 2 diabetes, but a significant number could be unaware of their diagnosis,” lead researcher Tainayah Thomas, an assistant professor of epidemiology and population health at Stanford University, said in a news release.

“If even only a small proportion of these are newly diagnosed, this would make a significant public health impact,” Thomas said.

For the new study, researchers analyzed the health records of people sharing a home with a patient diagnosed with prediabetes — a condition in which blood sugar is elevated, increasing risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

The people all were being treated by Kaiser Permanente Northern California, a health care system for about 4.5 million patients.

The researchers identified more than 356,000 people with prediabetes, and of those, about half (52%) were living with other people.

Results show that more than 75% of people with prediabetes had at least one other household member with one or more diabetes risk factors.

Overall, diabetes risk factors were found in 65% of adults and 35% of children. Overweight or obesity was the most common risk factor, present in 55% of adults and 34% of children.

In addition, abnormal blood sugar levels were found in 32% of adult household members. About 20% had a blood test result indicating prediabetes, while the tests of 12% showed they already had type 2 diabetes.

In essence, nearly 30,000 adults with full-blown type 2 diabetes were living in the same household as an adult with prediabetes, researchers said.

“These are huge numbers of people identified with both prediabetes and type 2 diabetes,” Thomas said.

The study indicates that households share habits that could increase risk of type 2 diabetes, researchers said. For example, people living together might have diets containing too much excess sugar and carbohydrates, or they might tend to not get enough exercise.

“It is also of course an opportunity to make lifestyle changes to reduce the chances of metabolic complications in both adults and children,” Thomas said.

Health care systems might consider a similar approach to screen for diabetes risk among the families they treat, researchers said.

“All health systems could use this approach as a data driven strategy to better and more systematically identify people at high risk for diabetes,” Thomas said. “This strategy could allow health systems to identify and tailor diabetes prevention messaging and programs to entire households instead of just individuals.”

Researchers are slated to present their report Sept. 15 at an EASD meeting in Vienna.

Findings presented at medical meetings should be considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more on diabetes risk.

SOURCE: European Association for the Study of Diabetes, news release, Aug. 15, 2025