An estimated 25.8 million Americans, or 8.3% of the population, have diabetes and almost a third of those don’t know it, the CDC said.

Another 79 million people have prediabetes, with high fasting glucose or hemoglobin A1c levels but not quite at the frank diabetes level, the agency said in its National Diabetes Fact Sheet for 2011.

The estimates suggest the prevalence of the disease is rising: In 2008, the CDC estimated that 23.6 million Americans, or 7.8% of the population, had diabetes and another 57 million adults had prediabetes.

The findings are not a surprise, according to Robert Henry, MD, of the University of California San Diego, who is president for science and medicine of the American Diabetes Association.

‘This just confirms that diabetes is continuing to increase in this country,’ Henry told MedPage Today. ‘We predicted it, and it appears to be true — the epidemic is continuing unabated.’

The new estimates are ‘distressing’ and underscore the need to prevent diabetes and — in those already affected — to manage the illness to prevent complications such as kidney failure and blindness, according to Ann Albright, PhD, director of the CDC’s Division of Diabetes Translation.

In a statement, Albright noted that losing weight and increasing […]