Background: Diabetes epidemiological prevalence study is a preliminary step for planning community based intervention on diabetes care and prevention. Sporadic epidemiological studies on diabetes in India have been conducted but Community-based prevalence (self reported) estimates are unavailable for rural Mysore. Aims: Aim of this study was to estimate the prevalence of self-reported diabetes mellitus in rural Mysore. Setting and Design: This study was conducted in the field practice area of two Rural Health Centres (PHCs), JSS Medical College, Mysore with retrospective data from Comprehensive Data base of the family records. Methods: An individual should have been diagnosed to be a diabetic by a medical doctor and who was on anti diabetes treatment for at least the past six months. Results: We found 423 persons to be diagnosed with diabetes. Prevalence of known diabetes in the general population was 1.8% (423/23,281). Prevalence of known diabetes among persons aged above 35 years was 4.3%. Sex-specific prevalence of diabetes in rural Mysore was 2.1% (248/11,984) and 1.5% (175/11299) for men and women respectively. Conclusions: Community-based health surveillance data comprise a useful tool to measure the prevalence of diagnosed cases of diabetes mellitus within the Indian context. Low prevalence of known diabetics reflects ice berg phenomena in the burden of diabetes. High proportions of undiagnosed diabetic cases in the population are to be detected through screening programs. 

Key words: Community-based study; Diabetes prevalence; Self-reported-diabetes; Rural; Mysore.