A study shows that Americans with diabetes, born in the 1940s, live longer and with fewer disabilities than those born 10 years earlier.
This is reassuring news for the 4 million diabetes patients in France. An American study shows that Americans with diabetes, born in the 1940s, live longer and with fewer disabilities than those born 10 years earlier. Encouraging data published in the journal The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology.
Relayed by the site santelog, this work carried out by Atlanta, Georgia CDCs analyzed the evolution of the number of years of life with and without disabilities on a sample of American adults born in the 1940s vs. 1930s. The participants were aged 50 to 70 and 1,367 were diabetic and 11,414 in good health. health.
Fewer strokes and amputations
Scientists first find that from the age of 50 and up to 70 years, adults living with diabetes have a reduced life expectancy and a higher number of years with disabilities, compared to non-diabetics.
But this difference is reduced in diabetic participants born later (1940 versus 1930). They take the example of a 50-year-old man living with diabetes born in the 1940s. The latter “gains” 0.8 to 2.3 years of life without disability compared to a person with diabetes born 10 years earlier. .
Finally, again in this man, the annual incidences of several complications related to diabetes are reduced, including those of heart attack, stroke, and amputations.
Towards a trend reversal
To explain these good results, the team highlights the many interventions carried out in recent decades to help people age better with diabetes. They aimed, for example, at promoting healthier lifestyles (without tobacco, alcohol, etc.) in these patients. “Advances in the management of diabetes (treatments) and other chronic diseases, such as heart disease, have also reduced the prevalence of disabilities, especially around age 70,” adds Edward Gregg, lead author of the study.
For this reason, he is worried that the observed trend will not last. “The aging population is now more likely to develop T2DM with in particular the increase in obesity rates, unhealthy diet, the increasing prevalence of excess alcohol and physical inactivity”, concludes- he.
And the United States, the study country, may be the first victims of this reversal. There, the incidence and prevalence of T2DM has more than doubled over the past 20 years. More than 21 million Americans today live with diabetes.
(1) The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of Atlanta, Georgia)
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