Development and implementation of diabetes management programs may be urgently needed to reduce the burden of diabetes in Asia, according to a study published April 19 in JAMA Network Open.

Jae Jeong Yang, PhD, et al., examined the association of diabetes with all-cause and cause-specific mortality in Asia using participant data from 22 prospective cohort studies of the Asia Cohort Consortium. A total of 1,002,551 Asian individuals from mainland China, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, India and Bangladesh were followed up for more than three years.

Results showed that out of the more than one million participants, 148,868 deaths were ascertained during a median follow-up of 12.6 years. The overall prevalence of diabetes reported at baseline was 4.8 percent for men and 3.6 percent for women.

Patients with diabetes were found to have a 1.89-fold risk of all-cause death compared to patients without diabetes, with the highest relative risk of death due to diabetes itself, followed by renal disease, coronary heart disease and ischemic stroke.

The researchers also discovered that adverse diabetes-mortality associations were more evident among women and younger patients than men and elderly patients. A similar pattern of association was found between diabetes and cause-specific mortality, with significant variations noted by sex and age.

"The diabetes epidemic in Asia is expected to continue to accelerate; thus, many Asian individuals will live with diabetes and its complications," the authors write. "[This] large sample size and the availability of individual participant data of more than one million Asian individuals from 22 prospective cohort studies yields great statistical power to assess potential variations in the diabetes-mortality associations by participants' characteristics."

Keywords: Risk, Brain Ischemia, Follow-Up Studies, Stroke, Diabetes Mellitus, Asia, Coronary Disease, Cause of Death

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