Profile of diabetes mellitus among immigrants from Guyana: epidemiology and implications for community action.

Objective: Prompted by anecdotal evidence of a higher rate of type 2 diabetes, we set out to investigate the prevalence of diabetes, its risk factors, and co-morbidities among immigrant Guyanese patients being treated in a family medicine health center in Schenectady, New York.

Methods: Patients were ascertained from a registration database of all patients aged > or = 30 years who were treated from 2004 to 2006. We then conducted a detailed retrospective chart review of all Guyanese, Caucasian, African American, and Hispanic patients with diabetes and randomly selected non-diabetic controls.