The serious health condition affected about 14 percent of adults worldwide in 2022, compared with seven percent in 1990, according to new analysis in the journal The Lancet.

Taking global population growth into account, the research team estimated that more than 800 million people are now diabetic, compared to less than 200 million in 1990.

These figures include both main types of diabetes. Type 1 affects patients from a young age and is more difficult to treat because it is caused by a deficiency of insulin.

Type 2 mainly affects middle-aged or elderly people who lose insulin sensitivity.

Behind the global figures, the national figures varied widely.

The rate of diabetes remained the same or even decreased in some wealthier countries such as Japan, Canada or Western European countries such as France and Denmark, the study found.

“The burden of diabetes and untreated diabetes is increasingly borne by low- and middle-income countries,” he added.

For example, almost a third of women in Pakistan are now diabetic, compared to less than a tenth in 1990.

The researchers pointed out that obesity is an “important driver” of type 2 diabetes – as is an unhealthy diet.

The gap between how diabetes is treated in richer and poorer countries is also widening.

Three out of five people over the age of 30 with diabetes — 445 million adults — did not receive diabetes treatment in 2022, researchers estimated.

India alone was home to almost a third of this number.

In sub-Saharan Africa, only five to 10 percent of adults with diabetes received treatment in 2022.

Some developing countries, such as Mexico, are doing well in treating their populations — but overall, the global gap is widening, they said.

“This is of particular concern because people with diabetes tend to be younger in low-income countries and, in the absence of effective treatment, are at risk of lifelong complications,” said the study’s lead author, Majid Ezzati, from Imperial College London.

Those complications include “amputation, heart disease, kidney damage or vision loss — or, in some cases, premature death,” he said in a statement.