"In the six-year period between 1997 and 2003 the number of new cases soared 74 per cent, and rose 63 per cent across the entire decade.
The research, led by experts from Spain and Sweden, was published online in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
The findings suggest that the rate of diabetes in Britain is increasing faster than in the US, where prevalence of the disease is one of the highest in the world.
The charity, Diabetes UK, estimates that as many as 180,000 adults are found to have Type 2 diabetes each year, in addition to up to 2,000 children with the Type 1 form. An estimated 2 million people are living with either form of the disease.
For the study, patients aged between 10 and 79 were identified using the Health Improvement Network, a register of anonymised data from 300 GP surgeries.
Over the decade, 49,999 people who already had diabetes were added to the register as were 42,642 new cases.
Of those new cases, 1,256 had Type 1 diabetes and 41,386 had Type 2.
An analysis showed that the overall number of cases rose by 4.9 per cent per year on average and the overall prevalence increased from 2.8 per cent of the population in 1996 to 4.3 per cent in 2005.
The prevalence of the disease was around 29 per cent higher in men than in women.
The number of new cases of Type 1 diabetes remained fairly constant over the decade but the number of Type 2 cases rose 69 per cent, reflecting more overweight and obese people, the authors write."
TImes Online, Feb 24 2009