Diabetes Shortens Life Span
Better control of the disease could bring longer, healthier life

(HealthDay News) -- Having diabetes can take years off your life.

Researchers who analyzed data on more than 5,200 people concluded that a diagnosis of diabetes meant the average life expectancy dropped by about eight years.

"Having diabetes at age 50 years and over does not only represent a significant increase in the risk of developing cardiovascular disease and mortality but also a very important loss in life expectancy and life expectancy free from cardiovascular disease," the study's lead author, Dr. Oscar H. Franco, told HealthDay . Franco was a researcher at the University Medical Center Rotterdam in the Netherlands at the time of the study.

But prevention could have a significant impact on those numbers, he said, because the overwhelming majority of people with diabetes have the obesity-linked type 2 form of the disease.

"Prevention of diabetes is a fundamental task facing today's society aiming to achieve populations living for longer and healthier," Franco said.

In their review of data, all stemming from participants in the Framingham Heart Study, the researchers found that women with diabetes had more than twice the risk of heart disease than did women without diabetes. Women who had both diabetes and heart disease were twice as likely to die as women who just had heart disease.

As for men, they, too, were twice as likely to develop heart disease if they had diabetes than if they didn't. However, men had a slightly lower risk of death from diabetes and heart disease than did women with both conditions.

Overall, life expectancy dropped by 7.8 years for men with diabetes and 8.4 years for women with the disease, the study found. The findings were published in the Archives of Internal Medicine .

"It's sobering to think about the number of years of life lost," Dr. Larry Deeb, immediate past-president for medicine and science at the American Diabetes Association, told HealthDay . "We ought to be able to reduce the cardiovascular risk, because we can manage diabetes better today, but we're not."

He called the findings "a powerful argument to people who have diabetes -- that you have to control the diabetes."

The National Diabetes Education Program recommends that all diabetics become familiar with their ABCs:

• A stands for A1C, a long-term measure of blood sugar control. The goal for most people with diabetes is to have an A1C below 7 percent.
• B represents blood pressure. Most diabetics should aim for blood pressure below 130/80.
• C is for cholesterol. The bad cholesterol -- LDL -- should not be above 100 in people with diabetes, and the good cholesterol -- HDL -- should be above 40.

On the Web

Learn more about preventing diabetes complications from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

SOURCES: HealthDay News ; Oscar H. Franco, M.D., D.Sc., Ph.D., senior public health epidemiologist, Unilever Corporate Research, Sharnbrook, England; Larry Deeb, M.D., immediate past-president for medicine and science, American Diabetes Association, Alexandria, Va.; June 11, 2007, Archives of Internal Medicine ; National Diabetes Education Prevention (www.ndep.nih.gov)
Author: Serena Gordon
Publication Date: June 30, 2008
Copyright © 2008 ScoutNews, LLC. All rights reserved.