The number of people aged under 40 with a clinical diagnosis of type 2 diabetes in the UK has risen to 148,000, a 23% increase from 2017 figures, the charity warned. More than 3.78 million people in the UK have the condition.
There are many risk factors for type 2 diabetes, including genetics, ethnicity, obesity and family history.
However, the charity highlighted the disruption to lifestyles caused by the Covid lockdowns as potentially also being a factor, because of the effect it had on people’s habits, nutritional status and exercise.
