Utility of MDRF-IDRS (Madras Diabetes Research Foundation-Indian Diabetes Risk Score) as a tool to assess risk for diabetes—a study from north-west India

India with a high number of diabetic patients needs a simple, cost-effective, and efficient tool to screen and diagnose the huge pool of undiagnosed diabetics in the country. The purpose of this study was to estimate the utility of MDRF-IDRS in identifying risk for diabetes mellitus in rural adult population aged 30 years and above in Jammu (J&K). A cross-sectional study was conducted in RS Pura block of Jammu district in J&K state of India. The rural adults >30 years were surveyed by using a predesigned and pretested protocol which had MDRF-IDRS as a part of it. Further, the subjects were evaluated for their status as far as presence or absence of diabetes was concerned. A total of 2085 respondents comprising of 1116 males and 969 females were included in the study. 170/2085 of those screened with MDRF-IDRS score were known cases of diabetes mellitus. One hundred twenty out of these 170 had IDRS of ≥60 (70.58 %). The association between IDRS and diabetes mellitus patients was statistically significant. The study proves the utility of MDRF-IDRS in detecting those people who are at high risk of developing diabetes mellitus.