Monitoring has improved in recent years, but type 1 diabetes is underrepresented. Also, since many countries do not collect type 1 diabetes data, the numbers have always been skewed towards North America and Europe.
To counter the patchy numbers, the researchers created a model that used available data to predict type 1 diabetes worldwide.
The estimates contradict some myths about the disease, once called childhood diabetes, because its onset often occurs during childhood. Still, the majority of people diagnosed with the disease are between the ages of 20 and 59, and more adults than children are diagnosed each year.
Children, however, are at higher risk of dying from the disease, especially in low-income countries. A 10-year-old child who develops type 1 diabetes in a low-income country has an average remaining life expectancy of just 13 years compared to 61 years in high-income countries, the researchers write.
According to them, around 175,000 people worldwide died from type 1 diabetes in 2021, and 63-70% of deaths among people under the age of 25 occurred because the disease had not been diagnosed.
Better data could help increase the rate of diagnosis, the researchers say.
“There is an opportunity to save millions of lives in the decades to come,” said Graham Ogle, a researcher at the University of Sydney Medical School and one of the study’s co-authors, in a Press release. The figures are a warning, he said, that without solutions – such as universal access to insulin, a better standard of care and awareness of the symptoms of type 1 diabetes – the projection of the team will become a reality.
