In 1979 a work group of the National Diabetes Data Group¹ established the criteria, later endorsed by the World Health Organization Committee on Diabetes, that patients with a fasting or 2-h postprandial glucose concentration greater than 140 or 200 mg/dL, respectively, were to be considered diabetic.

In 1997, the Expert Committee on the Diagnosis and Classification of Diabetes Mellitus was convened to reexamine the classification and diagnostic criteria for diabetes based on the 1979 publication of the National Diabetes Data Group. As a result of its deliberations, the committee recommended several changes to the diagnostic criteria for diabetes and for lesser degrees of impaired glucose regulation.² The use of a fasting plasma glucose, or FPG, test for the diagnosis of diabetes was recommended, and the cut point separating diabetes from nondiabetes was lowered from a FPG > 140 mg/dL to > 126 mg/dL. This change was based on data that showed an increase in prevalence and incidence of diabetic retinopathy beginning approximately at a FPG of 126 mg/dL, as well as on the desire to reduce the discrepancy that existed in the number of cases detected by the FPG cut point of > 140 mg/dL and the 2-h value in the OGTT (2-h plasma glucose) of > 200 mg/dL.