Update of mortality attributable to diabetes for the IDF Diabetes Atlas: Estimates for the year 2013.

BACKGROUND Mortality is an important measure of population health and is often used to assign priorities in health interventions. Estimating mortality due to diabetes has been challenging because more than a third of countries of the world have no reliable data available on mortality. Moreover estimating mortality attributable to Diabetes is especially challenging since most people die of a related vascular complication such as cardiovascular disease or renal failure. AIMS The aim of the study was to provide estimate of the number of deaths attributable to diabetes for the year 2013. METHODS A computerized disease model was used to obtain the estimates. Using WHO life tables for 2010 and IDF diabetes prevalence estimates for 2013, age and sex-specific relative risks of death for persons with diabetes were calculated, in order to estimate the number of deaths attributable to diabetes in people 20-79 years of age. RESULTS This model estimated that globally, 8.4% of all-cause deaths were attributable to diabetes in adults aged 20-79 years, almost 5.1 million deaths. A sensitivity analysis adjusting relative risks by 20% found that the estimate of diabetes-attributable mortality to lie between 5.1% of total mortality (3.3 million deaths) and 10.1% of total mortality (6.6 million deaths). The highest rates of diabetes-attributable mortality were found to be 25.7% in South-East Asian women aged between 50 and 59 years old. The highest number of deaths attributable to diabetes was found in countries with large populations: 1271,000 in China, 1065,000 deaths in India, 386,400 in Indonesia, 197,300 in the Russian Federation and 192,700 in the United States of America. CONCLUSIONS Overall, 1 in 12 of global all-cause deaths were estimated to be attributable to diabetes in adults. In general, the number and proportion of deaths was slightly higher in women than in men.