RESUMO
Diabetes mellitus is one of the chronic metabolic diseases with several organ damages that dearese life span. Prevalence of known diabetes appears to be increasing in most countries, presumably due to increasing the prevalence of risk factors such as obesity, lower physical activity and improved diagnosis. WHO expect the number of adults [20 years and older] with diabetes rises up to 300 millions in 2025. In view of the worldwide geographic differences in diabetes and lack of documented informations about prevalence of diabetes in Iran, we assigned this study. The base of our study for assessment of prevalence of diabetes in Iran was results of ?Health and Disease Study in Iran, 1999?. We used epidemiologic model [DisMod] for estimating the incidence of diabetes in Iran. The prevalence of diabetes in over 20 years of Iranian population in 2000, was 1.6 million or 4.67%. Also it is estimated up to 100000 persons have been affected by type II diabetes. The true limitation of our study was limitations of documents about estimated of proportion of true prevalence to prevalence of known diabetes