Screening for pre-diabetes and diabetes in the workplace

Diabetes is an increasingly prevalent and burdensome disease in working populations. In settings with established occupational medical programmes, there may be opportunities to intervene in a positive way to reduce the burden of this disease.

To integrate diabetes screening and prevention into an existing occupational medical programme.

Screening to detect potential cases of pre-diabetes and diabetes was conducted in a large working population using differing criteria to define risk groups over a 2-year period. Classification of new cases was based on fasting plasma glucose, random plasma glucose or oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT).

Among 13,086 employees screened via fasting or random glucose, there were 96 diabetes and 650 pre-diabetes cases detected. Among high-risk employees, 20 new cases of pre-diabetes and 8 cases of diabetes were detected in 84 employees assessed by OGTT. The percentage of employees with new findings increased with increasing age (2.3%, under age 40 compared to 11.4% for age 50 years and above) and body mass index (2.6, 6.1 and 11.4% among normal weight, overweight and obese employees, respectively).

Given the likely magnitude of unrecognized diabetes and pre-diabetes cases, further interventions are being implemented targeting all employees and not just those who require routine occupational medical examinations.