A recent report released by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revealed this week that the number of new diabetes cases in the United States has decreased for the first time in decades.

Despite remarkable decline in number of diabetes cases, experts said that nation’s diabetes rates still pose a substantial public health threat.

Although the data has shown decrease in diabetes cases, the data may not reveal the full picture for some high-risk groups, including black and Hispanic communities, according to the lead researcher for the finding.

Dr. Edward Gregg, chief of the epidemiology and statistics branch at the CDC, said, “This has been encouraging, but we need to recognize those rates are still 60% higher than what they were in the '80s. Although we’re seeing reduction, we had such a large increase that we're still at such a high level”.

According to the CDC, the number of new diabetes cases has increased almost three times since 1980. In 1991 alone there were 573,000 adult diabetes cases.

Gregg said decreases in new cases for adults could be a result of people doing more exercise and eating healthy food. Increase in general awareness for diabetes epidemic and more physical activities have highly contributed in the decrease of new diabetes cases, according to the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion.

Gregg said the report had small samples size due to which researchers could not confidently say that the decreases is similarly statistically significant for older adults and black and hispanic communities.