We thank Sone et al. (1) for their letter in response to our article (2) on the prevalence of type 2 diabetes in Asian Americans. Dr. Sone raises some interesting points that highlight the need for more studies of type 2 diabetes in Asian populations.
We did not include an analysis of the association between BMI and diabetes prevalence for Asian Americans in our report. However, after considering Dr. Sone’s comments, we thought these results might be of interest to others.
We performed additional analyses using the methods described in our article (2). The odds ratio (OR) for type 2 diabetes, adjusted for age and sex, was 1.15 (95% CI 1.03–1.26) for every 1-kg/m2 increase in BMI among Asian Americans over age 30. Results were very similar for Americans of all ethnicities (adjusted OR 1.14, 95% CI 1.13–1.14). Compared with those with BMI <25 kg/m2, overweight (BMI 25–29 kg/m2) and obese (BMI ≥30 kg/m2) Asian Americans had progressively increased odds of type 2 diabetes (ORs adjusted for age and sex were 1.89, 95% CI 0.87–3.98, and 7.24, 2.47–21.24, for overweight and obese groups, respectively). The OR was not statistically significant for the overweight Asian- American group. However, when considering these results overall, the 2001 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System data provide clear evidence of an association between increased BMI and increased odds of type 2 diabetes in Asian Americans.