Your Family's Risk Too
Reviewed by CDE Mehandi Sharma · Updated
Your result is worth passing on, because family history is one of the recognised risk factors for prediabetes and Type 2 diabetes.
That means your siblings, your parents and your adult children all have a clear reason to be tested, whether or not anything feels wrong to them. A fasting glucose or HbA1c is inexpensive and widely available.
Two Indian specifics make this more pressing than it might sound.
Indians develop these conditions younger than white Europeans, so a relative in their thirties is not too young to be tested. And India uses lower weight thresholds — overweight from a BMI of 23 — so a slim-looking relative is not outside the risk group.
There is also the sheer scale to point to. India's national study put prediabetes at 15.3% of adults, roughly 136 million people, with more people in the prediabetes stage than the diabetes stage. In a family of six adults, the odds of you being the only one are not good.
How to raise it without alarming anyone: tell them what your result was, that you were told family history counts, and suggest they add a glucose test to their next check-up. That is enough. It does not need to be a campaign.
And if a relative is told they have prediabetes, that is the good version of the news — it is the reversible stage.