Increasing urbanisation coupled with rapidly changing lifestyle is leading to deficiencies across several important health parameters amongst Indians. While ailments related to important organs such as kidney and liver are on the rise, urban citizens of the country also fared poorly in other important counts including important vitamin deficiencies.

An analysis of the data collected by SRL Diagnostics showed a worrisome trend. The data was collected by SRL Diagnostics over a period of three years during 2015 to 2017 from across its centers in 29 states and four union territories.

“We have noticed an alarming level of vitamin D inadequacy in the country. And this finding is in sync with the findings of other medical research studies conducted in the country earlier. Of the total samples analysed, 79.12 per cent had either vitamin D deficiency or insufficiency. While women were more commonly vitamin D insufficient, men showed more cases of vitamin D deficiency. Similarly, an analysis of kidney function test results showed that 10.40 per cent had abnormal values of blood urea nitrogen (BUN), serum creatinine or both.

The results also showed that there was a rapid rise in abnormal KFT values in the ages above 60 years,” said, Dr B R Das, Advisor and Mentor - R&D, SRL Diagnostics

The analysis of lipid profile results meanwhile indicated that 34 percent of the population had abnormal values for one or more of the four parameters - HDL, triglycerides, LDL and total cholesterol. While men have more deranged LDL, HDL and triglyceride levels than women, on an average the total cholesterol level was found to be higher in women.

Another worrisome trend came from the analysis of glucose tests, which are conducted to establish the inability to process sugars correctly – precursor to diabetes. In pan India analysis on samples received mainly from urban areas, 19.22% of individuals were observed to be either pre-diabetic or diabetic, with men accounting for 20.80 per cent and women, 17.36 per cent.

“When we compared abnormal values across age groups, we observed that the age groups of 46-60 and 61-85 years showed the highest prevalence of (26.71% and 27.01% respectively) of presumed diabetics or pre-diabetics across four zones of India,” added Dr Das.

Similarly, analysis of various other important tests like vitamin B12, thyroid stimulating hormone, haemoglobin and uric acid too threw up abnormal results in individuals who had come for preventive health check tests.

For haemoglobin particularly, 38 per cent of women were diagnosed with anaemia (16% in men). Women from the eastern part (~50%) of India showed higher number of anaemia cases as compared with the other three zones. Of all the individuals who enrolled for preventive health check tests, 13.46% showed high levels of uric acid.

Speaking on the occasion of World Health Day, Arindam Haldar, CEO, SRL Diagnostics said, “For some time now, SRL has been working towards shifting the mindset of people from illness based diagnostics to wellness based preventive healthcare approach. With the Government of India picking up pace with the preventive healthcare, it is now the turn of the private sector to play its role in creating awareness about preventive care, by leveraging our reach and resources.”

“We must maintain our focus on leveraging technology, both biomedical and communication to the best of our capabilities thereby accelerating our progress towards universal health coverage (UHC),” he added.