Screening for diabetes in countries like Australia with significant populations of Asian migrants should reflect ethnicity-related differences, experts say.

Analysing data from the observational Fremantle Diabetes study over a 15 year period Professor Tim Davis and colleagues from the Fremantle Hospital in Perth found that Asians with type 2 diabetes were younger at diagnosis, leaner, less likely to be hypertensive and less prone to peripheral neuropathy than their Anglo-Celt counterparts from the same community.

Over the study period the management of diabetes and non-glycemic risk factors remained comparable between ethnicities, the study authors reported in the Journal of Diabetes.

In particular ethnicity-specific differences in susceptibility to microvascular complications should be considered in clinical management, they advised.