Prevalence of type 2 diabetes in Nepal: a systematic review and meta-analysis from 2000 to 2014

Understanding the prevalence of type 2 diabetes in Nepal can help in planning for health services and recognising risk factors. This review aims to systematically identify and collate studies describing the prevalence of type 2 diabetes, to summarise the findings, and to explore selected factors that may influence prevalence estimates.

This systematic review was conducted in adherence to the MOOSE Guidelines for Meta-Analysis and Systematic Reviews of Observational Studies. Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System (MEDLINE) database from 1 January 2000 to 31 December 2014 was searched for the prevalence of type 2 diabetes among Nepalese populations with a combination of search terms. We exploded the search terms to include all possible synonyms and spellings obtained in the search strategy. Additionally, we performed a manual search for other articles and references of published articles.

We found 65 articles; 10 studies fulfilled the inclusion criteria and were included in the analyses. These 10 studies comprised a total of 30,218 subjects. The sample size ranged from 489 to 14,009. All the studies used participants older than age 15, of whom 41.5% were male and 58.5% female. All the studies were cross-sectional and two were hospital-based. Prevalence of type 2 diabetes ranged from a minimum of 1.4% to a maximum of 19.0% and pooled prevalence of type 2 diabetes was 8.4% (95% CI: 6.2-10.5%). Prevalence of type 2 diabetes in urban and rural populations was 8.1% (95% CI: 7.3-8.9%) and 1.0% (95% CI: 0.7-1.3%), respectively.

This is, to our knowledge, the first study to systematically evaluate the literature of prevalence of type 2 diabetes in Nepal. Results showed that type 2 diabetes is currently a high-burden disease in Nepal, suggesting a possible area to deliberately expand preventive interventions as well as efforts to control the disease.