[Melnichenko]

According to a population-based study of 2 cohorts in the United Kingdom and in Canada, the overall excess mortality risk from having diabetes vs not having this disease has dropped by about half since the mid-1990s.

The collaborative work by researchers in Sweden, the United Kingdom, and Canada is published online June 20 in Diabetologia.

In 2009 compared with 1996, the excess risk for mortality in patients with diabetes vs patients without diabetes decreased from 90% to 51% in the province of Ontario, Canada and from 114% to 65% in a representative sample of patients seen in primary care in the United Kingdom.

"About 14 years ago, the excess mortality associated with diabetes was often quoted as a 2-fold increased risk; now it has gone down to about 50%," lead author Lorraine Lipscombe, MD, from Women’s College Hospital and the University of Toronto, in Ontario, told Medscape Medical News.