BMC Public Health Research article Prevalence of self-reported diagnosis of diabetes mellitus and associated risk factors in a national survey in the US population: SHIELD (Study to Help Improve Early evaluation and management of risk factors Leading to Diabetes) Harold E Bays†1, Debbra D Bazata†2, Nathaniel G Clark†3, James R Gavin III†4, Andrew J Green†5, Sandra J Lewis†6, Michael L Reed†7, Walter Stewart†8, Richard H Chapman†9, Kathleen M Fox†10 and Susan Grandy*†11 BioMed Central Open Access Address: 1Louisville Metabolic and Atherosclerosis Research Center, Louisville, KY, USA, 2Saint Luke's South Primary Care, Overland Park, KS, USA, 3American Diabetes Association, Alexandria, VA, USA, 4Emory University School of Medicine, Fairburn, GA, USA, 5Midwestern Endocrinology, Overland Park, KS, USA, 6Northwest Cardiovascular Institute, Portland, OR, USA, 7Vedanta Research, Chapel Hill, NC, USA, 8Center for Health Research, Geisinger Health Systems, Danville, PA, USA, 9ValueMedics Research, LLC, Falls Church, VA, USA, 10Strategic Healthcare Solutions, LLC, Monkton, MD, USA and 11AstraZeneca LP, Wilmington, DE, USA Email: Harold E Bays - hbaysmd@aol.com; Debbra D Bazata - debbazata@hotmail.com; Nathaniel G Clark - ngclark@adelphia.net; James R Gavin - jrgavin3@yahoo.com; Andrew J Green - ajgreen@pol.net; Sandra J Lewis - sandral@nw-ci.com; Michael L Reed - mlreed@vedantaresearch.com; Walter Stewart - wfstewart@geisinger.edu; Richard H Chapman - rick.chapman@valuemedics.com; Kathleen M Fox - kathyfox@comcast.net; Susan Grandy* - susan.grandy@astrazeneca.com * Corresponding author †Equal contributors Published: 3 October 2007 BMC Public Health 2007, 7:277 doi:10.1186/1471-2458-7-277 This article is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/7/277 Received: 13 April 2007 Accepted: 3 October 2007 © 2007 Bays et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Background: Studies derived from continuous national surveys have shown that the prevalence of diagnosed diabetes mellitus in the US is increasing. This study estimated the prevalence in 2004 of self-reported diagnosis of diabetes and other conditions in a community-based population, using data from the Study to Help Improve Early evaluation and management of risk factors Leading to Diabetes (SHIELD). Methods: The initial screening questionnaire was mailed in 2004 to a stratified random sample of 200,000 households in the US, to identify individuals, age ≥ 18 years of age, with diabetes or risk factors associated with diabetes. Follow-up disease impact questionnaires were then mailed to a representative, stratified random sample of individuals (n = 22,001) in each subgroup of interest (those with diabetes or different numbers of risk factors for diabetes). Estimated national prevalence of diabetes and other conditions was calculated, and compared to prevalence estimates from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 1999–2002. Results: Response rates were 63.7% for the screening, and 71.8% for the follow-up baseline survey. The SHIELD screening survey found overall prevalence of self-reported diagnosis of diabetes (either type 1 or type 2) was 8.2%, with increased prevalence with increasing age and decreasing income. In logistic regression modeling, individuals were more likely to be diagnosed with type 2 diabetes if they had abdominal obesity (odds ratio [OR] = 3.50; p < 0.0001), BMI ≥28 Page 1 of 9 (page number not for citation purposes)