The annual number of diabetics has risen with the obesity epidemic, bringing with it an 80 per cent increased risk of heart attack, experts suggest.

People with type 2 diabetes suffering from heart attack have doubled in the past ten years. Almost 13,000 diabetics are now treated for a heart attack every year, which was only 6,000 in 1996.

The proportion of hospital admissions for strokes and angina has also doubled among diabetics, while the rate of keyhole heart surgery has risen fourfold in the last decade.

There has also been a significant rise in cases of type 2 diabetes, from 1.4 million in 1996 to two million today.

Libby dowling, a care adviser at diabetes UK, said, the numbers were growing and reaching epidemic proportions. "We were seeing people diagnosed younger and so the complications were likely to happen earlier. We are seeing a society that is more overweight and less active and that is going to predispose more people to type 2 diabetes,'' the Daily Mail quoted her as saying.

The researchers looked only at type 2 diabetes, the most common form of the disease. This is usually identified in middle age, although Britons' expanding waistlines mean more youngsters are being diagnosed with it.