This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
CDC: Nearly half of US adults likely to develop diabetes
Recent data showed that 40% of US adults are likely to be diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in their lifetimes.
Data from the CDC, published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, showed even worse predicted outcomes for certain non-white groups such as Latino men and black women; however, mortality for all groups related to diabetes declined in the same period.
Edward Gregg, PhD, chief of the epidemiology and statistics branch in the division of diabetes translation at the CDC, and colleagues examined data on 598,216 US adults from 1985 to 2011 from the National Health Interview Survey. Diabetes was identified via self-report and included all types of diabetes except for gestational diabetes. The researchers isolated data into three cohorts based on the year of mortality.
Edward Gregg
The most severe display increase of disease was seen in the 2000 to 2011 cohort, wherein lifetime risk for diagnosed diabetes from age 20 years was 40.2% (95% CI, 39.2-41.3) for men and 39.6% (38.6-40.5) for women; this represented increases of 20 percentage points for men and 13 percentage points for women since the 1985 to 1989 study period, the researchers wrote.
Even higher lifetime risks were designated for Hispanic men and women; non-Hispanic black women faced the highest incidence of disease morbidity, with lifetime risk for diabetes exceeding 50%.
“Soaring rates of diabetes since the late 1980s and longer overall life expectancy in the general population have been the main drivers of the striking increase in the lifetime risk of diabetes over the last 26 years. At the same time, a large reduction in death rates in the US population with diabetes has reduced the average number of years lost to the disease,” Gregg said in a press release.
Study data demonstrated that life-years lost to diabetes when diagnosed at age 40 years decreased from 7.7 years (95% CI, 6.5-9) in 1990-1999 to 5.8 years (95% CI, 4.6-7.1) in 2000-2011 in men, and from 8.7 years (95% CI, 8.4-8.9) to 6.8 years (95% CI, 6.7-7.0) in women during the same time frame. The average number of years lost due to diabetes for the population as a whole increased by 46% in men and 44% in women due to growing disease prevalence in the study population.
“The overwhelming increase in diabetes prevalence has resulted in an almost 50% increase in the cumulative number of years of life lost to diabetes for the population as a whole: Years spent living with diabetes have increased by 156% in men and 70% in women,” Gregg said.
“These findings mean that there will be a continued need for health services and extensive costs to manage [diabetes] and emphasize the need for effective interventions to reduce incidence,” the researchers wrote.
Disclosure: The researchers reported no relevant financial disclosures.