FRIDAY, Jan. 17, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- From 2001 to 2016, mortality declined among people with diabetes in Hong Kong, according to a study published online Jan. 16 in Diabetologia.
Hongjiang Wu, M.P.H., Ph.D., from the Chinese University of Hong Kong Prince of Wales Hospital, and colleagues describe trends in mortality rates using data from the Hong Kong Diabetes Surveillance Database diabetes cohort; data were included for 390,071 men and 380,007 women aged 20 years or older. (The authors were not able to differentiate between types of diabetes, although >95 percent of people with diabetes in Hong Kong have type 2 diabetes.) Deaths were identified from linkage to the Hong Kong Death Registry.
The researchers identified 96,645 and 88,437 deaths in men and women, respectively. All-cause, cardiovascular disease, and cancer mortality rates declined among people with diabetes, with decreases of 52.3, 72.2, and 65.1 percent, respectively, among men and 53.5, 78.5, and 59.6 percent, respectively, among women. There was no change in pneumonia mortality rates. Among people with diabetes, the leading cause of death shifted from cardiovascular disease to pneumonia in the oldest age group; among people aged 45 to 74 years, cancer remained the most common cause of death. All-cause standardized mortality rates declined from 2.82 to 1.50 for men and from 3.28 to 1.67 for women. During the study period, the declines in all-cause mortality rates were not statistically significant for those aged 20 to 44 years.
"The less marked improvements in all-cause mortality rates among young people in Hong Kong and in other regions is concerning," the authors write.
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