OBJECTIVES: The health related quality of life (HRQoL) focused research in developing countries is scanty and far between, where 80% of healthcare cost is borne by the patient. Indian patients have different social, socioeconomic and personal outlook, therefore the HRQoL results from the western studies cannot be directly extrapolated to Asian populations. This study was conducted to make an assessment of the trends in HRQoL research in patients with diabetes in India and Asia vis-à-vis the western population. METHODS: We performed literature searches in Pubmed, Clinicaltrials.gov and country-specific registries for 1985–2016 to identify studies investigating HRQoL in patients with diabetes and compared these with those for the US and the UK. RESULTS: Only 46 publications were identified from India, followed by Malaysia (31) and Singapore (25), which, respectively, make only 3.8, 2.5 and 2.0% of that published from USA. The contribution from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Thailand was negligible. The increasing sensitivity of Indian scientists towards QoL was evident from the increasing number of publications over the years. The number of papers published for Indian populations increased from 2 in 1991-95 and 1996-2000, 4 in 2001-2005 and 7 in 2006-2010 to 31 in 2011-2016. Similar trends were also observed in other Asian countries. Most of the studies, including those from USA and UK employed generic HRQoL tools, viz. EQ-5D, SF-36, SF-12 and SF-6D. The diabetes specific assessment tools like ADDQoL were used very sparsely. A QoL tool (Quality of Life Instrument for Indian Diabetes patients, QOLID) specific for Indian patients with diabetes has also been developed recently but needs further validation. CONCLUSIONS: The need for research into the humanistic burden of diabetes is being increasingly recognized worldwide, including in Asian countries such as India, and may be expected to improve patient care.