An estimated 750,000 people in the UK have diabetes that is either undiagnosed or unrecorded on diabetes registers. Opportunities are missed to prevent or delay complications and reduce cardiovascular risk. This `missing population' problem has been addressed at various levels: raising awareness among the public; targeted case finding in at-risk groups; and lowering the threshold for investigation of suggestive symptoms among clinicians. Cardiovascular risk assessments are recommended in the UK for the over 40-year-old population and include blood glucose measurements. To further support these measures, this article discusses a recently reported technique for identifying possible cases of undiagnosed diabetes using simple searches on primary care databases, and its implications for practice and future research.Br J Diabetes Vasc Dis 2008; 8: 291—294
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