Diabetes is a rapidly spreading global epidemic that feeds on the increasing levels of obesity and physical inactivity prevalent in modern societies. Aging populations and urbanization increase the trend.
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Cases Worldwide: 180 million
Main Causes: overweight and obesity, physical inactivity, aging
Distribution: worldwide; highest levels in South Asia, North America and the Middle East
Diabetes is a chronic disease that occurs when the pancreas does not produce enough insulin to regulate blood sugar levels—Type 1 diabetes—or alternatively, when the body cannot effectively use the insulin it produces—Type 2 diabetes. It is detected through blood testing and treated by administering insulin and a specific diet.
More than 180 million people worldwide have diabetes, seven times the population of cancer sufferers. Diabetes patients will more than double in number by 2030.
The disease is most prevalent in South Asia, North America and, in particular, the Middle East: In Saudi Arabia and Iran over 8 percent of the population aged 35 to 64 has diabetes.
Ninety percent of people around the world suffering with diabetes have Type 2 diabetes. It is largely caused by excess body weight and lack of exercise, and is increasingly prevalent as the obesity epidemic spreads across the globe.
In the UK, for example, recent research blamed Britain’s expanding waistline for a 69 percent increase in Type 2 diabetes between 1997 and 2003. Previously thought of as a disease of adults, Type 2 diabetes is now occurring in obese children as well.
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The disease is a concealed killer. Like HIV/AIDS, diabetes weakens the body, which then succumbs to other deadly conditions. Half of those with diabetes die of cardiovascular disease, 10 to 20 percent die from kidney failure.
People with diabetes are twice as likely to die as their peers without diabetes. But unlike HIV/AIDS, many of these deaths are attributed not to diabetes but to the immediate cause of death, and so the real burden of diabetes is often concealed.
In 2005, an estimated 1.1 million people died directly from diabetes-related conditions, but if diabetes is counted as a contributory factor that number rises to approximately 2.9 million deaths, more than five percent of all deaths worldwide and almost a million more deaths than the World Health Organization attributed to AIDS in 2007.
Although diabetes is often perceived as a disease of rich countries, almost 80 percent of diabetes deaths occur in low and middle-income countries as large, growing populations age and adopt increasingly sedentary lifestyles. Diabetes and its complications account for at least 10 percent of total healthcare expenditure in some countries.
In developing countries, the number of people with diabetes will more than double in all adult age groups by 2030. In developed countries, the number of over 65s with diabetes will double but there will be much smaller increases among the middle aged and young adults.
There is little people can do to avoid Type 1 diabetes. The far more common Type 2 diabetes, however, can be checked by maintaining a healthy diet and by being physically active for at least 30 minutes a day.
But aging populations and increasing urbanization and affluence mean that diabetes will continue to be a devastating disease for many decades to come.
editor: James Tulloch
publication date: February 24, 2009
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