Reconsidering the history of type 2 diabetes in India: Emerging or re-emerging disease.
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2008-11
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Abstract
The emergence of type 2 diabetes in India, coinciding with the
country’s rapid economic development in the past several
decades, is often characterized as a modern epidemic resulting
directly from westernization. We draw on India’s agricultural,
linguistic, medical, economic, religious and gastronomic history
to examine the possibility that type 2 diabetes mellitus may
have existed in ancient India, having subsequently declined in
the two centuries leading up to the present. The implications
of such a possibility vis-à-vis the role of westernization in the
global diabetes aetiology are discussed. Additionally, an
argument is made for careful application of the terms
‘westernization’ and ‘globalization’ in discussions of chronic
disease aetiology, where their often totalizing discourses may obscure the sociocultural particularities of manifestations of these conditions in various global arenas.
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Weaver Lesley Jo, Narayan K M Venkat. Reconsidering the history of type 2 diabetes in India: Emerging or re-emerging disease. National Medical Journal of India. 2008 Nov-Dec; 21(6): 288-291.