Da Qing Diabetes Prevention Study — 20-year follow-up of lifestyle intervention
In plain English
The world's first randomised trial of diet-and-exercise to prevent diabetes, begun in 1986 in Da Qing, China. 577 adults with impaired glucose tolerance across 33 clinics were assigned to lifestyle change or usual care for six years, then followed for 20. The intervention cut new diabetes by 43% over two decades — and later 30-year follow-up showed fewer cardiovascular deaths and added years of life. It is the long-term backbone beneath the US Diabetes Prevention Program and the Finnish prevention trials.
Why it matters
Six years of lifestyle change cut diabetes incidence 43% over 20 years.
Informs: Diabetes
Provenance
- Design
- Randomised controlled trial
- Sample size (n)
- 577
- Follow-up
- 20 years
- Peer-reviewed
- Yes
- Replications
- 3
- Funding
- Public / academic
- Funders
- China-Japan Friendship Hospital, US CDC, WHO
- Institutions
- China-Japan Friendship Hospital, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, WHO
decades.plus score
A transparent 0–100 weighted sum across six components. Higher scores reflect bigger, cleaner, more replicated work.
Caveats
Randomised by clinic rather than by individual, and conducted in a relatively lean Chinese population — absolute risks differ from Western cohorts. The active intervention lasted six years; the benefit persisted but attenuated over the following decades.
