More than 1 billion people could have diabetes by 2050, study says

Dive Brief:

More than 1.31 billion people worldwide could be living with diabetes by 2050, according to estimates published in the Lancet.
In 2021, roughly 529 million people worldwide had diabetes, according to the International Diabetes Federation. The rise in prevalence is expected to be driven by increases in Type 2 diabetes.
Overall healthcare spending related to diabetes is expected to rise to $1.054 trillion by 2045, the authors wrote. Global spending in 2021 was estimated at $966 billion by the International Diabetes Federation.

Dive Insight:

With diabetes cases expected to increase globally, current treatment is focused on biomedical interventions and new devices, according to an editorial published in the Lancet that accompanied the researchers’ findings. The authors said people who are marginalized and discriminated against suffer the “most and worst consequences” of diabetes, and “addressing structural racism must become a core component of preventive strategies and health promotion — areas that invariably receive too little investment.”

Just 10% of people living in low-income and middle-income countries currently receive guideline-based diabetes care, according to the researchers.

The pair of papers, which explain the role of racism and inequity in diabetes care and address possible solutions going forward, were published during the American Diabetes Association Scientific Sessions last week. The first study was published by a global group of collaborators and was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The second paper included authors at the Montefiore Medical Center in New York, the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa and the University of Yaoundé in Cameroon.

During the conference, medical device companies focused on interventions for Type 2 diabetes, with Dexcom announcing plans for a glucose sensor for people who don’t use insulin, and Insulet talking about its Omnipod GO patch pump designed for people who take basal insulin.

New drugs and devices alone aren’t enough to change the course of the disease — greater prevention and public health efforts are needed, the editorial said.

“Diabetes will be a defining disease of this century. How the health community deals with diabetes in the next two decades will shape population health and life expectancy for the next 80 years,” the authors wrote. “The world has failed to understand the social nature of diabetes and underestimated the true scale and threat the disease poses.”