Diabetes is affecting more than 460 million people worldwide, lowering life expectancy by about 18 years. It is also among the top 10 causes of mortality. Long-term complications like cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are the main cause of death of people with diabetes (PWDs), but also early diabetes complications like ketoacidosis an hypoglycemia. Many acute and chronic complication are preventable. In 2017 the BIDON foundation initiated the Dutch Pediatric and Adult Registry of Diabetes (DPARD), with the goal of acquiring an insight into the characteristics of the Dutch diabetes outpatient population. Diabeter is one of the participating centers in DPARD. The study described here, co-authored by Theo Sas of Diabeter, aimed to determine overall and cause-specific mortality in PWDs versus the general population.

DPARD data of PWDs visiting Dutch diabetes outpatient clinics between 2016 and 2021 were linked to data from Statistics Netherlands (CBS).

Key findings:

• Of the 12,992 PWDs included in the DPARD registry, 90% were adult, 10% were children, 40% had T1D, 46% had T2D, 1.5% had secondary or other type of diabetes and 12% had an unknown diabetes type
• Between 2016 and 2021, 5.5% of adults with diabetes died (rate: 219 deaths per 10,000 person-years)
• 1.9% of people with T1D died (at mean age of 70 years) and 9.4% of people with T2D (at mean age of 74 years)
• Factors associated with death among PWDs:
  • lower BMI
  • worse eGFR
  • higher albuminuria
  • smoking
• Compared with people withT1D, people withT2D:
  • were older
  • had shorter diabetes duration
  • were more frequently of non-native non-Westen origin
  • had higher BMI
  • had higher albuminuria levels
• Of all deaths of PWDs, 21% of deaths were CVD-related and 74% were recorded as non-CVD-related (of which 39% were cancer-related and 9% were COVID-19-related)
• There was no difference between people with T1D or T2D with respect to COVID-19-related death

Concluding, the authors state

Please click here for the PubMed link.