Wellington - Increasing rates of diabetes could make New Zealand's indigenous Maori people extinct by the end of the century, according to health researchers quoted in news reports on Tuesday. Diabetes among the Maori population of about 500,000 is at epidemic proportions, Professor Chris Cunningham, of Massey University's Research Centre for Maori Health, told Wellington's Dominion Post. He said Maoris and their Polynesian cousins from South Pacific island states living in New Zealand are more susceptible to the disease because they are not physiologically accustomed to the Western lifestyle and diet. "The reality is a Big Mac hurts Maoris more than it hurts Caucasians," he said. The onset of type-2 diabetes, which usually affects adults, is generally triggered by obesity. It is reported to account for 20 per cent of all Maori deaths compared with 4 per cent of the rest of the country's population. Reports quoted Professor Paul Zimmet, director of Monash University's International Diabetes Institute in Australia, as saying the rising incidence of the disease among the world's indigenous communities could decimate entire cultures. "Without urgent action there certainly is a real risk of a major wipeout of indigenous communities, if not total extinction, within this century," he said. He said the disease affected one in four indigenous adults and threatened to consume world economies and bankrupt health systems. Zimmet said Australia's Aborigines and native people in the United States and Canada were at as much risk as the Maori and Pacific Island populations. Zimmet was to air his claims at a Diabetes in Indigenous People Forum which opened in Melbourne, Australia, on Monday, the Dominion Post reported.