LIVING LONGER with DIABETES

Death rates among people with type 1 diabetes have declined in many countries including Australia, according to a new study. Here, the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute's Professor Dianna Magliano explains why.

- Dianna Magliano

New research shows that people with type 2 diabetes are living longer, suggesting that health management strategies developed to prevent potentially deadly complications like heart attack and stroke may be working.

A global study of 16 high-income countries, led by researchers at the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, reveals that death rates for people with type 2 diabetes are declining, including in Australia.

The strongest declines were seen in the Asian countries included in the study - Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore.

Published in the scientific journal The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology, the research also shows that the life expectancy gap between people with type 2 diabetes and those without the condition is narrowing in about half of the places assessed.

Although this narrowing was not observed in Australia, where the decline in death rates was about 2 per cent for people with diabetes, a similar reduction to those without the condition.

Researchers examined 21 million deaths in people with diagnosed diabetes in 16 high-income countries from 1995 to 2016. It was the first time this data - generated through improvements in population health records - could be assessed to give a clear picture of changes to diabetes death rates internationally.

Head of Diabetes and Population Health at the Baker Institute, Professor Dianna Magliano OAM says the findings suggest that diabetes care is continuing to improve, at least in the high-income countries like Australia, the US, Canada, and Denmark represented in this study.

“Interestingly, in the last decade several countries in Asia have implemented a whole of country diabetes management strategy, labelled by some as the 'War on Diabetes'," Professor Magliano says.