Background: Effective policies for diabetes prevention remain urgent. We conducted a mass screening campaign in Italy to identify subjects potentially having undiagnosed diabetes, prediabetes or at diabetes risk.
Methods: This cohort study was conducted in community pharmacies joining the unitary National federation of pharmacy holders (Federfarma) and participating in the 7-day screening campaign 'DiaDay' in 2017-2018. Capillary blood glucose levels and the risk of developing diabetes in 10 years (through the Finnish Diabetes Risk Score) were assessed.
Results: 145 651 volunteers aged ≥20 years without known diabetes were screened at 5671 community pharmacies in 2017 and 116 097 at 5112 in 2018. Overall, 3.6% had glucose values suggestive of undiagnosed diabetes; under fasting conditions (N = 94 076), 39.9% and 16.4% had values suggestive of prediabetes by the American Diabetes Association and the World Health Organization criteria, respectively. Of those without diabetes (N = 252 440), 19.2% had scores compatible with a high risk (1:3) and 2.7% with a very high risk (1:2) of developing the disease; in the prediabetes group, the risk rose with higher impaired fasting glucose values.
Conclusions: DiaDay, the first National screening campaign, highlights the need to screen the population and the key role of the pharmacist both in screening activities and education promotion.
Keywords: diabetes; epidemiology; screening.
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