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An Auckland diabetes expert has played down predictions that diabetes could lead to the extinction of Maori and Pacific Islanders.
While type 2 diabetes was at epidemic levels, it was premature to predict the end of Maori and Pacific Islanders, said University of Auckland clinical biochemistry professor Garth Cooper.
"It is a very serious problem, whether it will get that bad in 100 years is not clear."
However, the disease did ravage large parts of the world, he said.
"Based on current trends, in spite of everything that has been attempted things get worse not better ... We are seeing the increase in prevalence of type 2 diabetes in teenagers and children."
International diabetes expert Professor Paul Zimmet said at a Melbourne diabetes conference that extinction was a "very real reality" for Maori and Pacific Islanders, Australia's Aborigines and native Indians in the United States and Canada.
Professor Martin Silink, head of the Brussels-based International Diabetes Foundation, said indigenous people had a greater genetic risk of contracting type 2 diabetes when Western lifestyles and diets replaced traditional habits.
"They also have the genes that make the diabetes more damaging, so they are more prone to develop the serious complications of diabetes," Professor Silink said.
"There is a death due to diabetes every 10 seconds, and an amputation due to diabetes every 30 seconds. We are dealing with the biggest epidemic in world history."
However, Professor Cooper was optimistic that medical research could turn that picture around.
This, with healthy living, exercise and balanced diet, would prevent the dire prediction from happening.
Professor Cooper said the disease was ravaging almost every non-Caucasian group around the world.
"The question is, why are Caucasians not affected as severely, because just about every group is."
Health Minister Pete Hodgson has played down the doomsday prediction.
"I haven't read the study but had read media reports of a 'race of people dying out' and I did think that was probably a burning platform too far. But that is not to underestimate the importance of diabetes."
Type 2 diabetes
* Around 230 million people, or 6 per cent of adults worldwide, have type 2 diabetes.
* Last year, an estimated 125,000 New Zealanders were diagnosed with diabetes, 22 per cent of those Maori.
* The disease accounts for 20 per cent of all Maori deaths, and 4 per cent of non-Polynesian deaths.
* Maori women are 10 times more likely and Maori men 6.5 times more likely to die from diabetes than non-Maori.
* Pacific people are five times more likely to die from diabetes than non-Polynesians.
