US cardiovascular death rates with diabetes fell unevenly
Rates adjusted for age fell from 48.41 to 38.39 per 100,000 US adults aged 25 and older between 1999 and 2024.
Paper by Pengcheng Zhao, Yingan Li, Fang Wu et al.
Our read
Populations- Studied:
- Accepted, not yet published: cross-sectional study of 2,294,071 deceased US adults with recorded diabetes
- What changed:
- Age-adjusted cardiovascular death rates with recorded diabetes fell from 48.41 to 38.39 per 100,000 US adults, but trends varied across groups
- The catch:
- Only deaths listing diabetes as a contributing cause were counted
Editor of record: Boris Djordjevic · AgingResearch.News
US adults aged 25 and older were the focus of an analysis of national death certificates from 1999–2024. It counted 2,294,071 deaths listing heart and blood vessel disease as the underlying cause and diabetes as a contributing cause.
Death rates fell early, leveled off during 2012–2018, rose during 2018–2021 and then partly declined. Rates were consistently higher among men and non-Hispanic Black adults. They increased among adults aged 25–34 and 35–44 but declined in most older groups. Years-of-life-lost rates, a measure of premature mortality, also declined overall after adjustment for age. Death rates exceeded pre-pandemic projections throughout 2020–2024, with 78,572 deaths above expectations.
Why it matters
Tracking both death rates and years of life lost gives a fuller view of the burden of heart and blood vessel disease across adulthood and older age.
Caveats
The analysis counted only deaths with diabetes recorded as a contributing cause; its general-population rates do not measure death risk among people living with diabetes. The rise began before the pandemic, and the excess burden has no single established cause.
The paper
Pengcheng Zhao, Yingan Li, Fang Wu et al.
Frontiers in Public Health, Nov 10, 2026, CC BY, Accepted, not yet published
Comments
Be the first to comment.