Zucker I, et al. – This study entails the appraisal of the mortality risk related to new–onset diabetes in adulthood, by age group and gender. Findings reported that incident diabetes in adults was associated with a substantial risk for mortality, especially in younger adults.

Methods

• From the database of a large health care provider, researchers identified 31,987 individuals diagnosed with diabetes during 2003–2005; and 162,656 individuals without diabetes, group-matched by age.
• They used Cox regression to estimate hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs) for overall mortality adjusted for age, gender, socioeconomic (SE) level, obesity, smoking and comorbidities at baseline.

Results

• Findings reported that during a median follow-up of 9.5 years, 4464 (14%) of persons with diabetes and 13,327 (8.2%) of those without died.
• Researchers found that among persons with incident diabetes, the proportion of men, smokers, obese and patients of low SE level was higher, as was the prevalence of cardiovascular disease and renal impairment at baseline.
• They also noted that incident diabetes was associated with an adjusted HR for mortality of 1.38 (95% CI 1.32–1.43).
• Data highlighted that mortality HR for DM was comparable with hypertension (1.42; 1.37–1.46), smoking (1.65; 1.58–1.71) and atherosclerosis (1.40; 1.35–1.46).
• In addition, results indicated that diabetes associated mortality HR was somewhat higher among women 1.78 (95% CI 1.58–2.08) as compared with men 1.51 (95% CI 1.41–1.62).