Diabetes and Heart Disease Linked
Gains in reducing deaths due to heart disease could be greatly reduced by the trend for an upsurge in diabetes, according to a report in the medical journal Diabetes.
"Over the past 30 years, the US has achieved dramatic reductions in illness and deaths from coronary artery disease," says study lead author Dr. Jing Fang, at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
"But if this upsurge in diabetes-associated deaths and illnesses continues, it may put an end to the progress we've made in combating illness and death from coronary artery disease," he says.
Diabetes affects an estimated 18 million people in the US (90 percent to 95 percent have type 2 diabetes) - 13 million have been diagnosed, but 5.2 million are unaware they have the disease.
According to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) and the American Diabetes Association, those affected include:
- 9.3 million US women (8.7 percent of all women)
- 8.7 million US men (8.7 percent of all men
- 206,000 people under age 20
- 8.6 million adults over age 60
- 2.7 million African Americans (11.4 percent of all African Americans)
- 2 million Hispanic/Latino Americans (8.2 percent of all Hispanic/Latino Americans)
- 12.5 million Caucasian Americans (8.2 percent of all Caucasian Americans)
According to the most recent statistics, diabetes was the sixth leading cause of death, and the fifth leading cause of death from disease.
Diabetes costs $90 billion annually in direct medical costs. It costs $40 billion annually in indirect costs (loss of work, disability, loss of life).
"Diabetes has reached epidemic proportions in the US and the leading cause of death among people with diabetes is coronary heart disease," notes senior author Dr. Michael Alderman, professor of epidemiology and population health at Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
"We expected to see an increase in hospitalizations due to heart attacks among diabetics, but we were surprised by the magnitude of the increase and the sharply rising trend indicated by these findings," says Dr. Alderman.
Dr. Fang's team analyzed New York City death records for people 35 and older from 1989 to 1991 and from 1999 to 2001.
In the decade that elapsed between these two periods, death rates due to stroke, cancer, and all other diseases declined.
The exception was the diabetes death rate, which increased by 61 percent.
Over that decade, the percentage of heart attacks among people with diabetes increased from 21 percent to 36 percent.
The total number of diabetics who had a heart attack more than doubled - from 2,951 to 6,048.
While there was an overall decline among the general population in days spent in a hospital due to heart attack, diabetics showed an increase of 51 percent.
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