<International Circulation>: As we know, diabetes is associated with factors such as genetic and diet, which are different between Chinese and Westerner. Could you please to introduce characteristics of diabetes in Western country that is different from Chinese?
<International Circulation>: What experiences does Finnish have in screening the early diabetes? The FINDRISC established by you are able to discover high risk individuals before diabetes. Would you like to introduce the main content of FINDRISC and main cautions of it using in Chinese population? FINDRISC include main components of metabolic syndrome. How do you think about the main mechanism that metabolic syndrome increases the risk of diabetes? And in your opinion, what kind of drugs should we use to treat diabetic patients with metabolic syndrome.
Prof. Tuomilehto: We have been developing early risk detection scores for people with diabetes and it has been applied in Finland and other European countries. This score is very simple and comprise 8 items. The most important factors include the person’s age, obesity and family history of diabetes. These are the so-called causal factor for type-2 diabetes and it I very suitable for use in different populations. However, one has to know that the importance of body size and family history can be different between ethnic groups. In addition in some ethnic groups some people can get diabetes at a younger age and so the age factor can be different. Therefore, what we recommend is that if one chooses to use a diabetes risk score then they should firstly validate it in their patient population. Regarding this we have actually attempted to modify a test more suited towards Chinese population in Qingdao.