This is in response to the article by Brož and Nunes (2019) regarding the prevalence of diabetes among Serbian Roma women. The authors inadvertently refer to only one instead of two recent studies on Roma women’s health conducted among two separate Roma groups: the Romanian Roma in northern Serbia (N=82) (Coe & Čvorović, 2017) and the Gurbeti Roma (N=414) from western Serbia (Čvorović, 2018). In both studies, the samples were voluntary, health was self-reported and prevalence of diabetes among women with chronic diseases was 11.8% and 9.66%, respectively. At present, the Serbian Roma population is estimated to range from 100,000 to 500,000. This discrepancy is due to many Roma declaring as members of the majority as many deny their ethnic identity. Reliable data on Roma chronic disease prevalence and incidence do not exist as there are no precise data about their total number.

The Roma share many characteristics with other South Asian population groups, and this, along with the initial and subsequent serial bottleneck events in the Roma history, might have shaped the genetics of some cardiovascular/metabolic diseases that today appear as prevalent among the Roma (Mendizabal et al., Reference Mendizabal, Lao, Marigorta, Kayser and Comas2013). As an actual individual risk of disease is affected by multiple genetic and non-genetic factors, in addition to the Roma general poverty and under-utilization of preventive medicine, a significant non-genetic influence may be the traditionally encouraged reproductive pattern, including higher parity among Roma women vs non-Roma: meta-analysis has found that high parity is associated with glucose tolerance, impaired fasting glucose and type 2 diabetes, even after adjustment for confounders (Li et al., Reference Li, Shan, Zhou, Xie, Bao and Zhang2016). Pregnancy and the accompanying changes in lifestyle may impact on women’s health, especially on the risk of diabetes and other cardio-metabolic disease in the future (Jasienska, Reference Jasienska2009). Further studies among Roma women are necessary to adjust for the potential confounders and explore the causality between parity and type 2 diabetes risk.