Higher mortality rate seen in middle-aged diabetes patients

(HealthDay)—Middle-aged people with type 2 diabetes, particularly women and those under the age of 55, have a two to three times higher risk of all-cause and cardiovascular mortality than people without diabetes, according to research published online Feb. 22 in Diabetes Care.

Kathryn S. Taylor, Ph.D., of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, and colleagues conducted a cohort study using data from the General Practice Research Database from 2004 to 2010 for 21,798 people with type 2 diabetes and 65,300 age- and sex-matched individuals without diabetes. The authors sought to assess the relative risk of all-cause and cardiovascular mortality in middle-aged people aged 40 to 65 years.

The researchers found that, compared with matched controls, people with type 2 diabetes had a 2.07-fold higher risk of all-cause mortality and a 3.25-fold higher risk of cardiovascular mortality, even after adjusting for smoking. Individuals with the highest risk were women and people under the age of 55 years. The overall rate of monitoring and medication rates were higher for those with diabetes than in healthy controls.

"Our study highlights the important need to continue efforts to improve life expectancy in people with type 2 diabetes," the authors write. "This appears to be particularly important for women and for younger middle-aged people."