The data in this review article are based on MEDLINE and PubMed searches with the search term “diabetes mellitus”, “obesity”, or both, in combination with the keywords “prevalence”, “Asia”, and selected Asian countries. A search of MEDLINE and PubMed was also done with search terms “diabetes”, “Asian”, or both, together with the terms “β-cell defect”, “lean body mass”, “abdominal adipose tissue”, “nutrition transit”, and “sedentary lifestyle”.
We selected papers that were published between