How Common Is LADA?

LADA is more common than most people assume, and much more common than it appears in clinic records — because the antibody test that would identify it is rarely done.

Estimates place LADA at around 4 to 12% of adults diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. Applied to the roughly 422 million people worldwide living with diabetes, that suggests somewhere between 17 and 50 million people.

The largest single study, across nine European countries, tested 6,156 adults aged 30 to 70 within five years of diagnosis. Just under one in ten — 9.7% — carried islet antibodies. Among everyone who tested positive, LADA outnumbered classic adult Type 1 diabetes by more than three to one.

India has no national figure. What exists is smaller studies, and they suggest autoimmunity is not unusual here either. In 51 people aged 8 to 35 newly diagnosed in north India, 48% were positive for GAD antibodies — about half of a group split clinically between Type 1 and Type 2.

A single-centre study of 77 adults in north-eastern Uttar Pradesh reported an unusually high positivity rate, but its size and selection make it a signal rather than a national estimate.

The honest summary is that nobody knows India's true figure. What is reasonably clear is that LADA is not rare, and that it goes unrecognised for years when nobody thinks to test for it.