Recently, someone commented that more people died in Spain for diabets than for traffic accidents, here I leave some numbers, I would lack contrasting them with traffic accidents ...
Experts consider diabetes a worldwwneen "pump"
is suffered 250 million (50% without diagnosing and barely 25% well controlled), which will be 380 million in 2025.
Every five seconds, a person develops diabetes;Every ten, some of them dies from their vascular, renal, retina and lower extremities complications, which even force foot amputations.There are 3.8 million deaths every year, a figure similar to that of HIV-AIDS.And direct health costs range between 2.5% and 15% of national health budgets.But the most serious, as the 13,000 specialists from all over the world gathered these days in the 69th scientific sessions of the American Diabetes Association (ADA-2009), is that it is a preventable and treatable disease.
Diabetes is a chronic and progressive pathology in which the organism does not produce or use insulin, a hormone manufactured by the pancreas that transforms food into the glucose that gives energy to the cells.There are two classes.The type 1, when insulin creative cells are destroyed by the immune system itself, requires daily insulin injections;It is usually diagnosed in children and young people, and represents 5-10% of cases.And the most common type 2 (90-95% of cases), whose great risk factor is obesity, which multiplies by seven the probability of developing the disease and has led one of the companies that most investigate in diabetes,Novo Nordisk, to alert of that danger with an expressive neologism: "diabesity."
The following epidemic
It will be "the following epidemic, dictated by childhood obesity," the Mexican endocrinologist at the University of Texas Pablo Mora warned in a special symposium.And the data supports their touch of attention.In 2007 there were 523 million obese people and 1.5 billion overweight, which in 2015 will be respectively 704 and 2.3 billion.At the same time, people with diabetes will go from 246 million in 2007 to 380 million in 2025, 54% more in just two decades.
The obesity -diabetes correlation has been highlighted in scientific forums -although without pending sufficiently in the general population, which denounce the increasingly worrying situation in the rich world for the sedentary lifestyle and bad eating habits.The forecasts make it clear that the problem persists both in North America (43% more cases of diabetes, from 28.3 million in 2007 to 40.5 million in 2025) and in Europe (20% more, from 53.2 to 64, 1 million).But the most disturbing thing is that the increase will be even more marked in developing countries: 102% more in Latin America and the Caribbean (from 16.2 to 32.7 million), 82% more in the Middle East (from 24.5 to44.5 million), 80% more in Africa (from 10.4 to 18.7 million), 73% more in the Southeast Asia (from 46.5 to 80.3 million), 48% more in the Western Pacific (from 67 to 99.4 million).Countries like China and, above all, India are considered by the "high -risk" experts for the development of the disease, an authentic "watchmaking pump" of diabetes.
Poor control
To this worrying backdrop are added the deficits in the diagnosis and control of the pathology, even in developed countries.Mads Krogsgaard Thomsen, vice president and director of research and development of Novo Nordisk, remembered in New Orleans that this "global epidemic" is aggravated in practice because 50% of people with diabetes are without diagnose and because, of that diagnosed half,The optimal control of the disease does not reach 50%.In sum,That the handling of three out of four patients leaves much to be desired, which prevents their early and effective treatment before increasingly serious complications arise.
Especially when therapeutic guidelines, starting with changes in lifestyle -healthy diet and physical exercise -are already established and continue to advance to increase their effectiveness.
The studies presented in this annual Congress of the ADA confirm the validity of a new family of drugs, known as GLP-1 receiving agonists, to achieve several beneficial effects combined.The last one, Liraglutida, is about to be approved in Europe after receiving the approval of the corresponding Committee of the European Medication Agency.As Alan Garber explained, of Baylor College of Medicine of Texas, the daily dose drugthe function of beta cells of the pancreas.And all this with a lower rate of hypoglycemia, one of the great fears of patients and doctors.
