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• Posted November 14, 2024

More Than 800 Million People Worldwide Now Have Diabetes

Fourteen percent of the world's people -- more than 800 million -- now have diabetes, a doubling of the global rate for the blood sugar disease since 1990, new statistics show.

Type 2 diabetes, which makes up 95% of cases, is surging in poorer countries. However, across these resource-poor nations, only half of people get treated, said a team reporting Nov. 13 in The Lancet journal.

That means that about 445 million people with diabetes aren't controlling their blood sugar levels in ways that could keep them healthy.

At the same time, folks living in richer nations saw a rise in their treatment rates, noted a team led by Majid Ezzati of Imperial College London (ICL).

All of this “highlights widening global inequalities in diabetes, with treatment rates stagnating in many low- and middle-income countries where numbers of adults with diabetes are drastically increasing," said Ezzati, who is a professor of global environmental health at ICL.

"This is especially concerning as people with diabetes tend to be younger in low-income countries and, in the absence of effective treatment, are at risk of lifelong complications -- including amputation, heart disease, kidney damage or vision loss -- or in some cases, premature death," he noted in a journal news release.

The new analysis is the first global calculation of diabetes case numbers and treatment rates that includes all countries, the researchers noted. The data included 140 million adults involved in more than 1,000 studies located across different countries.  

According to Ezzati and colleagues, an estimated 828 million adults were living with diabetes in 2022 -- a quadrupling of case numbers since 1990, when 198 million adults were estimated to have the disease.  

Diabetes rates rose most rapidly in poorer nations. While certain wealthy countries --  Japan, Canada, France, Spain and Denmark -- saw no change or slight declines, the reverse was true for lower-resource countries.

For example, in Pakistan the rate of diabetes among women has soared from 9% in 1990 to almost 31% in 2022, the analysis showed. Island nations in the Pacific have adult diabetes rates topping 25%, as do populations living in the Caribbean, the Middle East and North Africa, according to the report.

But richer nations weren't immune: The United States had the highest diabetes rate of wealthy countries, at 11.4% among women and 13.6% of men.

The rise of obesity and poor quality diets are to blame for much of the increase in type 2 diabetes rates worldwide, the researchers noted.

According to study co-author Dr. Ranjit Mohan Anjana, of the Madras Diabetes Research Foundation in India, "our findings highlight the need to see more ambitious policies, especially in lower-income regions of the world, that restrict unhealthy foods, make healthy foods affordable and improve opportunities to exercise through measures such as subsidies for healthy foods and free healthy school meals, as well as promoting safe places for walking and exercising including free entrance to public parks and fitness centers."

In the meantime, too many people are going without treatment.

Treatment rates varied widely between nations. The global leader is Belgium, where 86% of women with diabetes and 77% of men get proper treatment.

However, in some poorer countries over 90% of people with the illness do not get treated, the analysis found.

“Our findings suggest there is an increasing share of people with diabetes, especially with untreated diabetes, living in low- and middle-income countries. In 2022, only 5-10% of adults with diabetes in some sub-Saharan Africa countries received treatment for diabetes, leaving a huge number at risk of the serious health complications.” said study co-author Jean Claude Mbanya, of the University of Yaoundé, in Cameroon. 

Over 133 million people in India have untreated diabetes, the report found, and 73 million people in China are also going untreated.

Experts believe that many of these untreated people may not even know they have diabetes.

“Most people with untreated diabetes will not have received a diagnosis, therefore increasing detection of diabetes must be an urgent priority," Mbanya stressed.

More information

Find out more about type 2 diabetes at the American Diabetes Association.

SOURCE: The Lancet, news release, Nov. 13, 2024