Delhi NCR

City differences between editions reflect different tested samples, not population health trends.

A third of Delhi NCR's liver panels read abnormal, and no other metro is close#

Of 765 liver panels mapped to Delhi NCR pincodes, 34.4% carry at least one marker above this report's cutoff for it: SGPT above 40 U/L, SGOT above 40, or GGT above 60. The next of the five metros, Hyderabad, reads 21.7%. That is a gap of 12.7 points, and nothing else in the metro comparison comes near it.

The SGPT-only column matters because the first measure is a composite, and the three markers in it are not interchangeable. SGPT, which is ALT, sits primarily in the liver and is a more specific marker of liver injury than SGOT. GGT lacks specificity for liver disease, and clinical guidance is explicit that it should not be used to screen for liver disease when no other liver chemistry is abnormal (Kwo et al., Am J Gastroenterol, 2017). Strip the composite back to SGPT alone and Delhi still leads by 11.7 points. The lead is not an artefact of the broader definition.

Delhi NCR here is a set of pincode-based reporting areas, meaning where a report's pincode maps rather than where anyone works or lives, and the five metros hold 6,718 of the report's 7,810 liver panels. This is a comparison among five reporting areas, not a national ranking. Two much smaller areas read higher than Delhi: Amritsar at 60.0% on five panels, Patna at 34.8% on 23. Neither is large enough to rank.

Nearly half of Delhi NCR's male liver panels read abnormal, and its female panels lead the metros too#

Nearly one male panel in two is above a cutoff, against fewer than one female panel in five: a gap of 30.5 points, the widest of the five metros on this cut. A male-female difference in liver markers runs through the whole report, not just Delhi, at 30.1% of 4,433 male reports against 9.1% of 3,377 female reports.

What is specific to Delhi is that both sides are elevated against their peers. Delhi's 47.5% male share leads Hyderabad's 33.3% by 14.2 points. Its 17.0% female share leads Mumbai's 9.1% by 7.9 points, a narrower gap in points but nearly double the next city's rate. The other female shares are Bengaluru 7.6%, Pune 7.1% and Hyderabad 6.8%. Read as "a male problem", the Delhi result loses the group standing proportionally furthest from its own peer cities.

Delhi NCR's liver results peak in the 30s; blood sugar is highest at 60 and over#

HbA1c is a blood test that reflects average blood sugar over roughly the preceding three months. 5.7% or above is the line usually described as elevated and 6.5% or above the line usually described as diabetic range. Delhi's HbA1c share rises at every age step. Its abnormal liver share peaks earlier.

The abnormal liver share is highest in the panels from people in their 30s, at 42.4%, and lower in each older age group. Elevated blood sugar runs the other way, from roughly one report in ten in the 20s to three in four at 60 and over, with the steepest single step between the 30s and the 40s, 27.8% to 49.3%.

The early liver peak is also present in the male panels. Delhi's male panels read 49.0% of 145 in the 20s and 56.3% of 174 in the 30s, then 40.8%, 30.3% and 23.3% across the three older bands. The female panels show a smaller age spread, from 13.8% to 19.4%, with the highest share in the 40s rather than the 30s. These female groups contain 29 to 103 panels each, so the small differences need caution.

These are different age groups, not people followed over time. The 40+ cells each contain fewer than 100 reports, so their patterns are tentative.

Unlike the liver markers, Delhi's elevated blood sugar is close to even between the sexes, at 33.2% of 370 male reports and 32.0% of 319 female reports. Across the five metros Delhi is fourth on this marker, behind Mumbai's 46.8%, Pune's 43.2% and Hyderabad's 39.2%; the report-wide view is on the blood sugar page.

Delhi NCR leads the metros on raised ESR, and reads lowest on three other markers#

The ESR test measures how quickly red cells settle in a tube of blood, which tracks indirectly with how much inflammation is present. It is not specific to any one cause: it rises in infection, in autoimmune disease and in anemia alike. Delhi's 30.7% is the highest of the five metros, against Mumbai's 26.3% and 16.2% to 19.5% in the other three, and the report-wide picture is on the inflammation page. WHI 2025 also put Delhi highest of these five metros on raised ESR, at 12.3% of 81 reports. That edition used a single cutoff above 30 mm/hr. The rank persisted under different definitions; the two rates do not measure the same threshold.

The two editions use different ESR cutoffs and tested samples, so their rankings do not show a change in Delhi's inflammation burden.

The two anemia rows are separate measures, not one split two ways: the thresholds differ, 12 g/dL for women and 13 for men. The city orderings differ too. Hyderabad sits above Delhi among women, at 42.0% against 41.4%; Delhi sits above Hyderabad among men, at 11.9% against 8.8%. That swap is the only difference between the two orderings: Mumbai is highest, Bengaluru lowest and Pune fourth in both.

Where Delhi reads best, the margin is wider than the table suggests. HDL is a cholesterol-carrying particle. Low HDL is associated with higher cardiovascular risk (MedlinePlus), and this report counts anything below 40 mg/dL for both sexes; that runs from 41.8% to 50.6% in the other four metros against Delhi's 39.1%. Vitamin D insufficiency runs at 83.1% to 83.9% in Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Pune and 76.9% in Mumbai, against Delhi's 72.9%.

B12 is the marker where Delhi is neither best nor worst. On the 300 pg/mL line Delhi and Pune print the same 67.7%, 445 of 657 against 1,124 of 1,661, and both sit well below Bengaluru's 78.8%. On the stricter 200 pg/mL line Delhi's 31.5% again sits second to Bengaluru, whose 47.9% is more than sixteen points clear of it. Both bands rest on the same 657 Delhi reports.

Metro coverage is partial and differs by marker: the five metros hold 6,934 of 7,914 ESR reports, 3,785 of 4,375 female anemia reports and 4,543 of 5,210 male anemia reports.

Elevated blood sugar in Delhi NCR reads ten points lower than in WHI 2025#

The share of reports with elevated blood sugar is 10.4 percentage points lower than in WHI 2025. The diabetic-range share is 3.3 points lower. These are comparisons of the tested samples in two editions, not evidence that the same people's blood sugar improved.

B12 below 200 pg/mL remains close to three in ten reports, at 30.7% in WHI 2025 and 31.5% in this edition. The broader below-300 band is 5.0 points higher, from 62.7% to 67.7%. Both editions use the same two B12 bands, with 153 Delhi reports in 2025 and 657 in 2026.

The published share with HDL below 40 mg/dL is also close across editions: 39.3% in WHI 2025 and 39.1% of 691 reports here. WHI 2025 does not publish the Delhi sample size for that measure, which limits how precisely the two samples can be compared.

Delhi ranked highest among the five metros on each edition's liver measure: 34.8% of 184 panels in WHI 2025 and 34.4% of 765 here. But the definitions differ. WHI 2025 described normal SGPT and SGOT as below 40 U/L for men and below 32 for women; this edition uses SGPT above 40, SGOT above 40 or GGT above 60 for both sexes. The near-identical percentages do not establish a stable rate on the same definition.

Different city samples and mappings mean these are not health trends.

Delhi NCR has the highest shares reporting caffeine, alcohol and nicotine use of the five metros#

The survey received 1,204 self-reported Delhi NCR responses. Survey cities use stated residence; biomarker cities use report pincodes.

Delhi leads the five metros on all three of the substances the survey asks about, and on awareness of GLP-1 medicines, where its 32.5% is 5.3 points clear of Mumbai and nearly twelve clear of Hyderabad. The three substance-use rows count any or current use, not amount or frequency. The GLP-1 row measures awareness, not use.

Where Delhi is not first is worth naming precisely, because two of those places are closer than a ranking suggests. Mumbai has the highest share reporting no exercise day and the highest share in the two shortest sleep bands, Bengaluru eats out most, and Hyderabad has the highest "None of these" share. But Delhi is second of five on exercise, at 31.5% against Mumbai's 35.4%, and its stress reading sits at the top of a cluster rather than clear of one: 41.5% against Hyderabad's 41.5% and Bengaluru's 41.3% on 1,566 responses. The three reported rates are within 0.2 percentage points at one decimal place.

Two rows carry their definitions with them. "None of these" is one option on a multi-select asking which of five specific things a person did in the past year, and those five include a doctor consult for a particular symptom or illness, so the row is not a count of people who did nothing about their health. Ten Delhi responses selected both "None of these" and a named action; the 40.5% records the checkbox selection, not confirmed absence of care. The sleep row counts the two shortest answer bands, under 5 hours and 5 to 6 hours; it is a count of answers, not a measurement of hours, and the adjacent 6-to-7-hour band, which holds more responses than any other, belongs to neither the short group nor the long one. What people told us about sleep sets out all five bands.

Survey answers and laboratory reports are not linked person by person. Reported substance use cannot explain the liver results here.