The Asian Association for the Study of Diabetes: The first 10 years and the next 10 years.

The Asian Association for the Study of Diabetes (AASD) was established in 2009 as an international academic organization corresponding to the American Diabetes Association and the European Association for the Study of Diabetes. The AASD is committed to promoting diabetes research activities across the region by organizing annual scientific meetings and publishing Journal of Diabetes Investigation to strengthen academic collaborations with international societies/associations, including the European Association for the Study of Diabetes and the American Diabetes Association by organizing joint sessions in scientific meetings and joint research activities, and to nurture the next generation of leaders of diabetes research and care in our region by hosting various types of face-to-face and online training courses. AASD strongly urges our regional and international colleagues, especially young colleagues who are just starting their career in the field of diabetes, to work together on the scientific platform of AASD to promote research for better diabetes care in Asia.

The global diabetes population today is 433 million (9.3% of the population aged 20–79 years), and is expected to grow to 700 million (10.9% of the population aged 20–79) by 2045 without effective countermeasures . By country, China (116.4 million) has the largest number, followed by India (77 million) and other Asian countries, including Pakistan, Indonesia and Bangladesh, which are among the top 10 and together account for >50% of the world’s population of people with diabetes (Figure 1) . In addition, more than half of the individuals with diabetes in Asia have not received a proper diagnosis; they realize they have diabetes only when they begin to suffer from complications of the disease, such as diabetic foot lesions and diabetic nephropathy. As diabetes complications substantially impact the health‐related quality of life of patients, effective measures to prevent the onset and progression of diabetes in Asia is an urgent task.

Figure 1

Global distribution of patients with diabetes and international academic organizations and the official journals related to diabetes research and care. The figure was generated from the IDF Diabetes Atlas 9th edition . AASD, Asian Association for the Study of Diabetes.

Due to the heterogeneous pathophysiology of diabetes, and the very diverse ethnicities and cultures in Asia, it is impracticable to prevent onset and progression of diabetes in the region by adopting guidelines established in other regions, such as Europe and the USA. Most importantly, East Asian type 2 diabetes is characterized primarily by β‐cell dysfunction, and generally lesser obesity and higher insulin sensitivity compared with that in white people, traits that have a critical impact on the appropriate therapeutic approach . Thus, there is a long‐recognized need for a scientific platform in Asia that allows exchange of clinical and research information relevant to diabetes prevention and care in our region. The Asian Association for the Study of Diabetes (AASD) was established in 2009 as an international academic organization corresponding to the American Diabetes Association (ADA) and the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD; Figure 1). In February 2009, leaders from six diabetes‐related societies/associations (i.e., Chinese Diabetes Society, Chinese Taipei Diabetes Association, Hong Kong Society of Endocrinology, Metabolism and Reproduction, Japan Association for Diabetes Education and Care, Japan Diabetes Society, Korean Diabetes Association [in alphabetical order]) gathered together in Nagoya, Japan, to discuss the establishment of the AASD; soon after, 17 diabetes‐related societies/associations in our region joined the AASD as affiliated societies/associations. In May 2009, the first AASD scientific meeting was held in Osaka, Japan. Despite the 2009 swine flu pandemic, many participants from Asian countries, as well as international guests including former International Diabetes Federation (IDF) president Professor Jean Claude Mbanya and former Diabetologia Editor‐in‐Chief Professor Edwin Gale, gathered together and fruitfully discussed issues of diabetes care in Asia. Since then, the AASD has held scientific meetings every year in various Asian cities (Figures 2,3); in November 2012, the fourth AASD scientific meeting was jointly held with the IDF‐Western Pacific Region (IDF‐WPR) congress in Kyoto, Japan, after which the AASD scientific meetings have been regularly held with the IDF‐WPR congress every second year and with annual meetings of the AASD endorsing societies/associations in alternate years. AASD also began to publish abstracts of their scientific meetings as a supplement in the Journal of Diabetes Investigation (JDI) in 2015. According to the Kyoto Declaration on Diabetes promulgated on the occasion of the fourth AASD scientific meeting/ninth IDF‐WPR meeting , the AASD is committed to hold annual scientific meetings to promote both clinical and basic high‐quality research on better prevention and care for diabetes patients in Asia.

Figure 2

The past scientific meetings of the Asian Association for the Study of Diabetes (AASD). CDS, Chinese Diabetes Society; ICDM, International Congress of Diabetes and Metabolism; IDF‐WPR, International Diabetes Federation‐Western Pacific Region; JDS, Japan Diabetes Society.

Figure 3

Photos from the first Scientific Meeting held in Osaka, Japan. The first Scientific Meeting of the Asian Association for the Study of Diabetes (AASD) was held in conjunction of the 52nd annual meeting of Japan Diabetes Society (President Prof. Atsunori Kashiwagi [upper left]; 21–24 May 2009; Osaka International Convention Center, Osaka Japan). Despite the 2009 swine flu pandemic, many participants from Asian countries, as well as international guests including former IDF president Prof. Jean Claude Mbanya (upper middle) and former Diabetologia editor‐in‐chief Prof. Edwin Gale (upper right), gathered together and fruitfully discussed issues of diabetes care in Asia (lower).

Important activities of the AASD include publication of its official journal, JDI. JDI was launched as a bimonthly journal in 2010. JDI received an impact factor, a marker of the relative importance of a journal within its field, within a short period of only 1 year after the first issue in March 2010; as of June 2020, JDI holds the impact factor 3.761 (ISI Journal Citation Reports©, ranking 48th of 143 journals in the field of endocrinology and metabolism) under the supervision of Editor‐in‐Chief Professor Nighishi Hotta (Figure 4). JDI became an Open Access journal in 2014, and is recorded in PubMed for easy access . Open Access journals generally charge high article processing charges ($US3,500 in the case of JDI) to authors, because publishers can no longer make profits through libraries and readers. To encourage publication by the AASD members, the AASD offers a society membership discount (100% and 71.42% discount for those from developing and developed countries, respectively). JDI is now indexed in globally recognized biomedical databases, including MEDLINE, increasing its visibility to the scientific community. Under the continuous supervision of Professor Hotta and his new editorial team starting from 2020, we expect that JDI will eventually be recognized as a highest‐quality academic journal comparable to the ADA’s Diabetes Care and Diabetes, and the EASD’s Diabetologia in the coming years.

Figure 4

Remarkable strides of Journal of Diabetes Investigation (JDI) to date. The numbers in blue circles are impact factors of JDI in the indicated year.

In 2013, the AASD also started the AASD award program to honor outstanding contributions to the mission of the AASD: Promoting Research for Better Diabetes Care in Asia (Table 1). The AASD award program started with three awards: the Yutaka Seino Distinguished Leadership Award, the AASD’s highest honor, which recognizes lifetime achievements and contributions to diabetology in Asia; The Masato Kasuga Award for Outstanding Scientific Achievement, which honors a young investigator for outstanding scientific achievements in the field of diabetes and related metabolic diseases in Asia; and the Xiaoren Pan Distinguished Research Award for Epidemiology of Diabetes in Asia, which recognizes outstanding epidemiological research in diabetes and related metabolic diseases for improvement of diabetes care in Asia. The AASD added two more annual awards to the program in 2018: The Eung Jin Kim Award for Excellent Activities for Diabetes in Asia, which honors an individual for excellence in bettering diabetes care in Asia; and The Boniface J. Lin Award for Outstanding Contributions to Diabetes Education in Asia, which honors an individual who has greatly contributed to the advancement of diabetes education in Asia. We hope that the AASD award program will encourage researchers and healthcare professionals in the field of diabetes to improve diabetes care in Asia.

Table 1

List of Asian Association for the Study of Diabetes Award Recipients

The Yutaka Seino Distinguished Leadership Award

2013 Graeme I Bell (University of Chicago)

2015 Wilfred Fujimoto (University of Washington)

2016 Hong‐Kyu Lee (Eulji Medical College)

2017 Nigishi Hotta (Chubu Rosai Hospital)

2018 Lee‐Ming Chuang (National Taiwan University)

2019 Guang Ning (Shanghai Jiao Tong University)

The Masato Kasuga Award for Outstanding Scientific Achievement

2015 Naoto Kubota (University of Tokyo)

2017 Daisuke Yabe (Kyoto University)

2018 Young Min Cho (Seoul National University)

2019 Norio Harada (Kyoto University)

The Xiaoren Pan Distinguished Research Award for Epidemiology of Diabetes in Asia

2013 Wenying Yang (China‐Japan Friendship Hospital)

2015 Juliana CN Chan (The Chinese University of Hong Kong)

2017 Weiping Jia (Shanghai Jiao Tong University Affiliated Sixth People’s Hospital)

2018 Nam Han Cho (Ajou University)

2019 Hirohito Sone (Niigata University)

The Eung Jin Kim Award for Excellent Activities for Diabetes in Asia

2018 Moon‐Kyu Lee (Sungkyunkwan University)

2019 Altaisaikhan Khasag (National University of Mongolia)

The Boniface J. Lin Award for Outstanding Contributions to Diabetes Education in Asia

2018 Shih‐Tzer Tsai (Cheng Hsin General Hospital)

2019 Mei Yeh‐Chang (National Taiwan University)

Affiliations at the time of the award are shown.

The mission of the AASD includes regional and international scientific collaborations. The AASD/IDF‐WPR Diabetes Foot Care Project is one of these important collaborations. This project was originally launched during Professor Yutaka Seino’s chairmanship of the IDF‐WPR in order to prevent the rapidly increasing occurrence of foot lesions in the region. The program has been inviting healthcare professionals from Asian countries to Osaka, Japan, once a year to give specific training in the care of diabetic foot lesions and to carry out multidisciplinary foot care education. The program has been continued by the AASD to collect data from Asia to establish guidelines; from 2019, the program has been conducted by the AASD and the IDF‐WPR jointly. The AASD also launched the AASD Diabetes and Nutrition Assessment Project to investigate the diversity of diabetes pathophysiology from perspectives of nutrition in 2015, and to contribute to future establishment of our own nutrition guidelines, as well as general guidelines on diabetes prevention and care. The Study Group on Molecular Diabetology in Asia (MDIA) and the Asian Islet Biology and Incretin Symposium (AIBIS) also became associated with the AASD as focus study groups from 2012. The AASD began international collaborations with the EASD from 2017. The AASD and EASD jointly hold themed symposia every year at the scientific meetings: “What’s new on β‐cell failure?” at the first joint session in the eighth AASD Scientific Meeting, “Tackling diabetes at a whole system level” at the second joint session in the 54th EASD Annual Meeting, “What’s new about incretins? Clinical and basic sciences from Europe and Asia” at the third joint session in the 10th AASD Scientific Meeting, and “Implementation Science in Diabetes” at the fourth joint session in the 56th EASD Annual Meeting. The AASD and EASD also began the AASD‐EASD joint clinical course in diabetes to train young healthcare professionals in Asia in 2019. The first course was held in Osaka, Japan; 19 participants gathered together from 10 Asian countries to learn the basic requirements for clinical research from outstanding faculty members (Figure 5). The AASD is now seeking potential collaboration with the ADA to nurture healthcare professionals working in diabetes education and care.

Figure 5

Photos from the first Asian Association for the Study of Diabetes (AASD)‐European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) Joint Clinical Course in Diabetes. The first AASD‐EASD Joint Clinical Course in Diabetes was held in Osaka (7–9 February 2019; Kansai Electric Power Hospital, Osaka, Japan). A total of 19 participants gathered together from 10 Asian countries to learn the basic requirements for clinical research from outstanding faculty members (Yutaka Seino [AASD, Chair], Xiaoling Cai [AASD], Tien‐Jyun Chang [AASD], Young Min Cho [AASD], Anne Clark [EASD], Jonathan Levy [EASD], Ronald Ma [AASD], David Matthews [EASD, Co‐chair] and Daisuke Yabe [AASD]; listed in alphabetical order).

The AASD was launched in 2009 with 17 affiliated societies/associations and approximately 1,000 individual members. In the past 10 years, AASD has rapidly grown to be a large scientific organization consisting of 28 affiliated societies/associations and ≥3,000 individual members. In the upcoming 10 years, AASD will continue to promote diabetes research activities across the region by organizing annual scientific meetings and publishing JDI, to strengthen academic collaborations with international societies/associations including the EASD and the ADA by organizing joint sessions in scientific meetings and joint research activities, and to nurture the next generation of leaders of diabetes research and care in our region by hosting various types of face‐to‐face and online training courses. Having said all that, the AASD strongly urges our regional and international colleagues, especially young colleagues who are just starting their career in the field of diabetes, to work together on the scientific platform of the AASD to promote research for better diabetes care in Asia.

Disclosure

YS has received consulting/lecture fees from MSD, Kao, Taisho, Boehringer Ingelheim, Eli Lilly, Becton Dickinson, Takeda, and Novo Nordisk and research support from Boehringer Ingelheim, Ono, Arkray Marketing, Sumitomo Dainippon, Taisho and Novo Nordisk. YY declares no conflict of interest . DY has received consulting/lecture fees from MSD, Novo Nordisk and Boehringer Ingelheim, and research support from Boehringer Ingelheim, Taisho, Ono, Novo Nordisk and Arklay.