Hidden High Blood Sugar Affects One in Sixteen Indian Women of Reproductive Age

A sweeping analysis of nearly 700,000 women across India has revealed that a substantial share of women in their reproductive years are carrying elevated blood glucose without knowing it. The study, published in Discover Social Science and Health by Margubur Rahaman, Md. Juel Rana and U. Venkatesh, drew on data from the National Family Health Survey conducted between 2019 and 2021, one of the largest household health surveys ever fielded. Among 688,349 women aged 15 to 49 who had never been told they had diabetes, 6.3 percent showed random capillary blood glucose readings of at least 140 milligrams per decilitre, a level that flags probable undiagnosed hyperglycaemia. Because none of these women reported a previous diagnosis, the finding points to a large reservoir of hidden metabolic risk in a population that is often assumed to be too young to worry about diabetes.

The scale of the dataset is what gives the result its power. The National Family Health Survey, known as NFHS-5, visited households in every Indian state and union territory, collecting capillary blood samples with portable glucometers alongside detailed questionnaires on education, wealth, diet, body measurements and reproductive history. That combination allowed the researchers to estimate weighted national and state-level prevalence and then probe which individual characteristics tracked with elevated glucose. The survey’s blood glucose measurement is a single random reading rather than a fasting or oral glucose tolerance test, so the authors are careful to describe their outcome as screen-detected hyperglycaemia, a non-diagnostic signal that requires confirmatory clinical testing rather than a formal diabetes diagnosis.

Geography turned out to matter far more than many observers might expect. State-level prevalence ranged from 2.1 percent to 11.4 percent, a more than fivefold spread that maps onto India’s well-documented epidemiological transition. States in the southern peninsula and parts of the northeast and east have generally reported higher diabetes burdens in prior surveillance, and the new analysis confirms that this regional signature extends to women who have never been screened. Yet when the researchers decomposed the variation statistically, the picture became more nuanced: only 0.9 percent of the total variance in screen-detected hyperglycaemia was attributable to the state level, and 2.8 percent to the district level. In other words, where a woman lives matters, but the overwhelming majority of the variation reflects differences between individuals rather than fixed geographic context.

To untangle those individual differences, the team fitted multilevel logistic regression models, a technique suited to hierarchically nested survey data in which women are clustered within districts and districts within states. Multilevel models prevent the underestimation of uncertainty that occurs when clustered observations are treated as independent, and they allow predictors at the individual level to be estimated simultaneously with random effects for each geographic unit. The results were consistent across specifications. Older age carried substantially higher odds of screen-detected hyperglycaemia, as expected from decades of diabetes epidemiology, since insulin resistance and beta-cell decline accumulate over the life course. Higher adiposity, captured through body mass and related anthropometric measures, was likewise associated with elevated odds, reinforcing the central role of excess weight in glucose dysregulation even among women young enough to be bearing children.

One of the more striking findings concerned education. Women with higher educational attainment had lower odds of screen-detected hyperglycaemia than their less-educated peers, a protective gradient that the authors interpret in light of health literacy, occupational patterns and access to preventive care. Education is a classic upstream determinant: it shapes what people eat, how much they move, whether they seek screening and how they respond to health messaging. Intriguingly, however, the differences across urban versus rural residence and across the survey’s socioeconomic indices were described as modest. That relative flatness challenges a common assumption that undetected hyperglycaemia in India is primarily a problem of the urban affluent or, conversely, of the rural poor; instead, the analysis suggests the risk is distributed more broadly across the social spectrum than prevailing narratives imply.

Robustness checks strengthened the case that the signal is real rather than a statistical artefact. When the team repeated the analysis using a stricter threshold of 160 milligrams per decilitre for random capillary glucose, the pattern of associations held, indicating that the findings are not driven by borderline readings near the 140 milligram cutoff. This kind of sensitivity analysis matters because capillary glucometer readings are noisier than laboratory venous measurements, and a single random sample can fluctuate with recent meals, time of day and acute stress. The consistency of the age, adiposity and education gradients across thresholds suggests that the survey is capturing a genuine burden of dysglycaemia, even if the precise prevalence figure would shift under formal diagnostic protocols.

The clinical and public health implications are considerable. Diabetes is famously silent in its early years; international estimates have repeatedly suggested that a large fraction of people with diabetes worldwide, and roughly half or more in some low- and middle-income countries, remain undiagnosed until complications such as neuropathy, retinopathy or cardiovascular disease emerge. For women of reproductive age, the stakes extend across generations, because hyperglycaemia during pregnancy raises the risk of adverse obstetric outcomes and programmes the metabolic health of offspring. The authors argue that their findings make a direct case for strengthening opportunistic screening and early detection within India’s primary healthcare system, particularly through existing platforms such as antenatal care visits, where blood glucose testing could be integrated more systematically for women who would otherwise go unscreened.

The study’s design imposes important limits on interpretation, and the authors are explicit about them. A single random capillary glucose of 140 milligrams per decilitre or above is not diagnostic; clinical guidelines require confirmatory testing, typically fasting plasma glucose, glycated haemoglobin or an oral glucose tolerance test, before a diagnosis of diabetes or prediabetes can be made. Some of the women flagged in the survey may have had transient post-meal elevations, while others may genuinely have undiagnosed diabetes. The cross-sectional design also means the analysis identifies associations, not causes: older women differ from younger women in many ways beyond age, and body composition was measured at a single point in time. The authors caution that interpretations should be made cautiously given the non-diagnostic and cross-sectional nature of the data, a caveat that responsible coverage of this work should preserve.

Even with those caveats, the study adds a missing piece to India’s diabetes picture. Most national surveillance and burden estimates focus either on diagnosed diabetes or on adult populations as a whole, leaving a gap around women of reproductive age who have never been tested. By quantifying that gap at 6.3 percent nationally, with pockets exceeding 11 percent in some states, the analysis gives policymakers a concrete target population and a rationale for embedding glucose screening into routine primary care contacts rather than waiting for symptoms. The finding that individual-level factors, especially age, adiposity and education, dominate over geographic context also suggests that screening criteria can be refined: prioritising older women within the reproductive age band and those with higher body mass could yield efficient case-finding even in resource-constrained settings.

The broader lesson resonates well beyond India. Rapid urbanisation, dietary change and declining physical activity are driving diabetes epidemics across South Asia and much of the developing world, and young women sit at the intersection of these trends and the intergenerational transmission of metabolic risk. Large, nationally representative household surveys with biochemical measurement, of which NFHS-5 is among the world’s biggest, offer a template for other countries seeking to size their own hidden epidemics. What this study makes unmistakably clear is that the absence of a diagnosis is not the absence of disease. Millions of Indian women are walking through daily life with blood sugar levels that their bodies are already struggling to regulate, and the health systems around them have yet to notice. Closing that blind spot, the authors conclude, is one of the most achievable wins available in the global fight against non-communicable disease.

Subject of Research: Screen-detected undiagnosed hyperglycaemia among women of reproductive age in India

Article Title: Socioeconomic, demographic and anthropometric predictors and geographic variation of screen-detected hyperglycaemia among women in India

Article References: Rahaman, M., Rana, M. J., & Venkatesh, U. (2026). Socioeconomic, demographic and anthropometric predictors and geographic variation of screen-detected hyperglycaemia among women in India. Discover Social Science and Health, 6(1), Article 108. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44155-026-00443-1

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44155-026-00443-1

Keywords: diabetes, hyperglycaemia, India, women's health, reproductive age, NFHS-5, screening, obesity, epidemiology, non-communicable diseases, public health, health survey