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Health

Snorers should be tested for diabetes

11 June 2008

SNORE a lot? Maybe you have diabetes. People with sleep apnoea, who briefly stop breathing and snort themselves awake, often also have type 2 diabetes – and vice versa. In fact, the evidence of a link is so strong that the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) is urging doctors treating patients with one condition to test for the other.

“There’s no question about the link,” says Paul Zimmet, co-chairman of the IDF’s task force on epidemiology and prevention, based in Melbourne, Australia. The IDF says that 40 per cent of patients with apnoea have diabetes, while about 23 per cent of diabetics have apnoea (…

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