Population shift towards healthier lifestyles can help reduce the burden of type 2
diabetes mellitus (DM), therefore understanding and monitoring the lifestyle-related
risk factors are crucial for setting up effective preventive strategies and disease
management. The present study aimed to explore the changes in prevalence of DM and
major risk factors including smoking, physical activity, fruit and vegetable consumption,
as well as body mass index (BMI) over three waves of European Health Interview Survey,
and to investigate the association between risk factors and presence of DM across
11 European Union member states. Poisson regression models were used to evaluate the
association between risk factors and DM, adjusted for demographic and socioeconomic
variables. The estimated age-standardized prevalence of DM increased from 7.01% in
2009 to 7.96% in 2019, with substantial increase in subgroups with higher BMI and
unhealthy lifestyle including physically inactive people, or current smokers. Obesity
and overweight and physical inactivity were significantly associated with DM in all
survey waves. Our findings underline that obesity prevention and weight loss promotion
along with physical activity promotion are the subject of lifestyle interventions
to reduce the burden of DM in EU member states.
