No progress seen in U.S. women diabetics' death rate

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The death rate for U.S. men with diabetes has fallen sharply since the early 1970s even as more people develop the disease, but women are not making the same progress, researchers said on Monday.

The study did not look at why, but the researchers said women may not be getting the same care for heart disease as men. Diabetes, the sixth-leading cause of death in the United States, greatly raises the risk of heart disease.

Researchers tracked about 27,000 people ages 35 to 74 in three national databases during three time periods running from 1971 to 2000.

Death rates from all causes for men with diabetes dropped from 42.6 per 1,000 people annually from 1971 to 1986, to 24.4 per 1,000 in the period from 1988 to 2000, the study found. Their deaths from cardiovascular disease, the biggest killer of diabetics, fell dramatically.

"Among men, we see very encouraging trends in death rates among the diabetic population," Centers for Disease Control and Prevention epidemiologist Edward Gregg, lead author of the study, said in a telephone interview.

"Men with diabetes have a 40 percent lower mortality rate than they did 30 years ago," added Gregg, whose research was published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.

Women with diabetes, however, experienced no improvement. While the study was not designed to find out why, Gregg said women may not have received the same comprehensive preventive care against threats like cardiovascular disease.

The death rate for female diabetics from all causes was 18.4 per 1,000 during the 1971 to 1986 period, then fell to 15.1 per 1,000 during an intermediate 1976 to 1992 period before hitting 25.9 per 1,000 during the 1988 to 2000 period.

'A WORSE SITUATION'

The death rates for the men started out much higher than for the women, but by 2000 were virtually the same. Gregg said, "It's generally easier to improve things when you're starting from a worse situation."

For people without diabetes, the death rate from all causes declined from 14.4 per 1,000 in the 1971 to 1986 period to 9.5 per 1,000 in the 1988 to 2000 period.

In diabetes, the body fails to produce or properly use insulin, a hormone necessary to convert sugar, starches and other food into energy. It is a leading cause of heart disease, stroke, blindness, kidney failure and amputations.

It has become increasingly common in the United States and many other countries as more and more people become obese.

The American Diabetes Association said 20.8 million U.S. children and adults have diabetes -- 7 percent of the population.

The most common form, called Type 2 diabetes, most often appears after age 40 in overweight, sedentary people, but a growing number of younger people and sometimes children are developing it.

Another study, in the American Heart Association's journal Stroke, found that people with the most common form of diabetes have double the risk for stroke compared to non-diabetics.

Researchers at the University of Alberta in Canada looked at about 12,000 people with Type 2 diabetes, with an average age of 64, and found that 9.1 percent had a stroke within five years of their diagnosis.