The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found that the rate of adults diagnosed with new cases of diabetes has increased more than 90 percent during the past 10 years.
The agency determined that almost five in every 1,000 patients had been diagnosed with the disease between 1995 and 1997, compared with about nine in every 1,000 people between 2005 and 2007 in 33 states.
Meanwhile, as more new diabetes cases have been diagnosed, so has the amount of money spent on drugs to control the disease. Researchers from the University of Chicago and Stanford University recently determined that diabetes drug spending almost doubled between 2001 and 2007, jumping from $6.7 billion to $12.5 billion.
Dr. Dev GnanaDev, medical director at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center in Colton, said he expects the problem to significantly increase in the next 10 years. An estimated 57 million people nationwide are estimated to have the disease by then, he said. Many of those will require disease-management drugs and additional doctor appointments and medical tests. More severe or unmanaged cases will require kidney dialysis and transplants and amputations, GnanaDev said.
“Just add them all up,” he said. “It’s just scary. I don’t know how we can afford to take care of these people.”
Diabetes has no known cure. Left untreated, it damages blood vessels and can lead to heart disease, blindness, kidney failure and amputations. In 2006, diabetes was the nation’s seventh-leading cause of death, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
More than 90 percent of people with diabetes are diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, which is manageable with medicine, exercise and good nutrition. Risk factors for type 2 diabetes include age, obesity, family history, lack of physical activity and race or ethnicity.
Sixteen percent of diabetes patients do not require medicine to manage the disease, the CDC estimates. The remaining 84 percent need insulin, oral medicines or both.
Diet and exercise can prevent many people from getting the disease, said GnanaDev, a vascular surgeon. A half-hour of walking as many as six days a week is enough, he said, and exercising can be as easy as using more remote parking spaces and walking to entrances.
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