TUESDAY, February 23, 2021 (HealthDay News) – According to a UK study published in the March 1 issue, the decline in vascular deaths in patients with diabetes has declined, making cancer the leading killer of those patients today Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology.
Jonathan Pearson-Stuttard of Imperial College London in the UK and colleagues used the Clinical Practice Research Datalink to identify 313,907 primary care patients with diabetes from 2001 to 2018. The records were linked to national mortality data, and the analysis looked at how all-cause and cause-specific mortality in people with diabetes changed over time.
The researchers found that all mortality decreased by 32 percent in men and 31 percent in women diagnosed with diabetes during the study period. Similar decreases were seen in those without diabetes, with the mortality gap between those with and without diabetes remaining intact during the study period. There were decreases in both diabetes and non-diabetes in 10 out of 12 cause-specific death rates, with the exception of dementia and liver disease, which increased in both populations. The main contributor to the death rate went from death from vascular disease to cancer in those diagnosed with diabetes.
“Clinical and preventive approaches must reflect this trend in order to reduce the excessive risk of mortality in people with diabetes,” the authors write.
One author announced financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry.
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