A new danger of diabetes for young people has been found

Scientists from the Diabetes Research Center at Aarhus University (Denmark) have found that type 2 diabetes (T2D) significantly accelerates the development of other chronic diseases, especially in people under 55 years of age.

As reported by BAKU.WS with reference to data presented at the annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD), by 2050, about 1.3 billion people will suffer from T2D. At the same time, patients more often face not only diabetes itself but also accompanying diseases - from hypertension to chronic kidney disease and depression. Such a combination of diagnoses, known as multimorbidity, significantly worsens the quality of life.

To determine how quickly diabetes leads to the accumulation of other diseases and whether this process depends on age, researchers analyzed data from more than 500 thousand people with an average age of 58 years. Over 15 years, they recorded cases of T2D development and tracked the appearance of new diagnoses (a total of 80 chronic conditions were considered).

The results showed: diabetes itself significantly accelerates the appearance of additional pathologies. For example, in people with T2D and one other disease, the probability of developing a third increased by 5.7% per year, while in patients without diabetes - by 3.5%. Overall, T2D increases the risk of new diseases by approximately 60%.

The effect was particularly pronounced in patients aged 40-55 years: the progression of multimorbidity in them was faster than in the elderly, even taking into account factors such as gender, education, and body mass index.