The Burrill Report

Cardiovascular disease and stroke deaths dropped by 40 percent for diabetic patients, according to a new report by the National Health Survey and released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health.

Better management of blood sugar levels and improved treatment likely contributed to the sharp drop in the death rate for diabetes patients. Between 1997 and 2006, deaths of diabetics from all causes declined 23 percent according to the study.

Diabetes is an epidemic in the United States as the number of Americans with the disease has more than tripled since the 1980, in large part due to the increase in Type 2 diabetes, which is associated with obesity. The CDC estimated that nearly 26 million Americans have diabetes and believes that 7 million of them don’t yet know it. It is also believed that people diagnosed with diabetes in middle age lose, on average, 10 years of life as a result of the disease.

The team of researchers produced the new results by evaluating data on nearly 250,000 adults obtained by the National Health Survey and compared it to deaths reported in the National Death Index.

Despite the encouraging news regarding dropping mortality for diabetes patients, the authors cautioned that the data may be limited because nearly 20 percent of people with diabetes remain undiagnosed and thus would not have been able to self-report the disease for the studies.

Furthermore, the authors suggest that people should be weary of a Catch-22 of sorts. Although reduction in deaths and improvements in diabetes care are encouraging, they also carry implications for the future burden of diabetes on the U.S. healthcare system as patients will need more years of testing for blood sugar, of checking for organ and limb health, and of taking drugs to combat the disease.




May 25, 2012
http://www.burrillreport.com/article-death_rates_among_americans_with_diabetes_falls_.html