Amid growing rates of early-onset type 2 diabetes, a recent study suggests that receiving a diagnosis before age 30 correlates with a significantly shorter life expectancy.
Published in The Lancet: Diabetes & Endocrinology, the study leveraged data from the Emerging Risk Factors Collaboration and the UK Biobank — two massive medical information databases. Researchers paid special attention to how a person’s age at the time of diagnosis might relate to life expectancy.
Type 2 diabetes is an acquired metabolic disorder in which the body struggles to produce and respond to insulin, the hormone responsible for managing blood glucose levels.
While previously confined to older demographics, type 2 diabetes is making its presence felt among younger individuals, and the growing prevalence of obesity has greatly contributed to the change.
The CDC recently sounded the alarm over rising adult obesity rates, as covered by The Dallas Express. It found that a total of 22 states — including Texas — reached an adult obesity rate of 35% or higher in 2022.
Perhaps more alarming is the fact that childhood obesity has also been increasing, especially among kids in the Lone Star State, which ranked 10th for childhood obesity rates in the country.
While type 2 diabetes accounts for the vast majority of the over 37 million Americans diagnosed with the metabolic disorder, a study in 2020 found that early-onset cases saw a 4.8% annual surge in prevalence since 2002.
The latest study in The Lancet found that a person’s life expectancy drops by 3-4 years every decade after being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. In other words, while a person diagnosed at age 50 could expect to live six years less on average, a person diagnosed at the age of 30 could expect to live 14 years less.
“Our findings support the idea that the younger an individual is when they develop type 2 diabetes, the more damage their body accumulates from its impaired metabolism,” explained Naveed Sattar of the University of Glasgow’s Institute of Cardiovascular and Medical Sciences, one of the paper’s authors.
One reason for this is that early-onset type 2 diabetes is more aggressive and usually does not respond as well to drug treatments, increasing the risks of kidney damage, cardiovascular disease, stroke, and blindness due to retina damage.
“Given the impact type 2 diabetes will have on people’s lives, preventing — or at least delaying the onset— of the condition should be an urgent priority,” said Stephen Kaptoge, another one of the paper’s authors. Kaptoge works at the University of Cambridge’s Victor Phillip Dahdaleh Heart and Lung Research Institute.
Taking proactive measures, such as maintaining a healthy weight, adhering to a balanced diet, and exercising regularly, is crucial to battling type 2 diabetes.
“Type 2 diabetes can be prevented if those at greatest risk can be identified and offered support — whether that’s to make changes to their behavior or to provide medication to lower their risk,” Kaptoge said. “But there are also structural changes that we as a society should be pursuing, including relating to food manufacturing, changes to the built environment to encourage more physical activity, and so on.”
