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Diabetes mortality risk similar among racial/ethnic groups
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Postmenopausal women with diabetes have the same increased mortality risk, irrelevant of their race or ethnicity, according to data from the Women’s Health Initiative.
“Although the probability of dying conditioned upon diabetes did not differ significantly by racial/ethnic group, the percentages of women with prevalent or incident diabetes were significantly different by race,” study researcher Yunsheng Ma, MD, PhD, associate professor in the department of medicine and division of preventive and behavioral medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, said in a press release.
Ma and colleagues analyzed data from the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI; 1993-2009) to compare all-cause, cardiovascular and cancer mortality in white (84.1%), black (9.2%), Hispanic (4.1%) and Asian (2.6%) postmenopausal women with and without diabetes (n=158,833).
According to data, women with diabetes demonstrated a two to three times greater risk for all-cause, CV and cancer mortality compared with patients without diabetes.
Patients’ population attributable risk percentages were assessed to determine the prevalence of diabetes and risk for all-cause mortality in whites (HR=11.1; 95% CI, 10.1-12.1), Asians (HR=12.9; 95% CI, 4.7-20.9), blacks (HR=19.4; 95% CI, 15-23.7) and Hispanics (HR=23.2; 95% CI, 14.8-31.2).
“Because of the ‘amplifying’ effect of diabetes prevalence, efforts to eliminate racial and ethnic disparities in diabetes mortality should focus on prevention of type 2 diabetes,” researchers wrote.
JoAnn E. Manson
These findings are consistent with other studies, demonstrating that postmenopausal women with diabetes have a greater risk for all-cause CVD and cancer mortality compared with women without diabetes, according to the researchers.
“We and other researchers have shown that 80% to 90% of diabetes cases may be preventable by lifestyle modifications, such as being physically active, maintaining a healthy weight and having a healthful diet,” researcher JoAnn E. Manson, MD, DrPH, NCMP, past-president of the North American Menopause Society; endocrinologist and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital; and chief of preventive medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, said in a press release. “This seems to be true across all racial/ethnic groups.”
Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.
Perspective
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Hillary Keenan, PhD
Ma and colleagues show that while different prevalence rates of diabetes among post-menopausal women in different racial/ethnic groups exist, rates of all-cause, cardiovascular and cancer mortality are uniformly elevated across all. This potentially suggests that there may not be a stronger endogenous “protective” factor in any one; this indicates that methods of diabetes primary prevention, and secondary prevention to reduce the progression to fatal sequelae could be effective if applied across all groups. Additionally, the documentation of higher prevalence of diabetes in the black and Hispanic groups illustrates these have more to gain with redoubled efforts of intervention.
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