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New data on the time trend in the incidence of diabetes in Germany
Diabetes mellitus is a metabolic disease that leads to elevated blood sugar levels. Type 1 and type 2 diabetes are the most common forms of diabetes. The number of new cases (incidence) is an important indicator for assessing the dynamic of the disease. The development of the incidence is linked to changes in behavioural and contextual factors and influences the development of the diabetes prevalence.
For Germany, there are no analyses so far of the time trend in the incidence of type 1 and type 2 diabetes that also consider the COVID-19 pandemic years. Against this background, the Diabetes Surveillance at the Robert Koch Institute, in cooperation with the Institute for Applied Health Research Berlin GmbH (InGef), analyzed data on the development of the incidence of diabetes and published the results in the Journal of Health Monitoring (Special Issue S5/2023). The study is based on anonymized routine data from around 9 million people with statutory health insurance in Germany. On this basis, new cases of diabetes in children, adolescents and adults were estimated for the years 2015 to 2021 for both genders and differentiated between type 1 and type 2 diabetes. In addition, the data was linked to the German Index of Socioeconomic Deprivation (GISD), which provides information on the incidence of diabetes according to regional socioeconomic deprivation. The results show that the incidence of type 1 diabetes increased in the years between 2015 and 2021, while the incidence of type 2 diabetes showed a decreasing trend in the same period up to 2020. In 2021, the incidence of type 2 diabetes rose again. This increase and the rise in the incidence of type 1 diabetes may be related to the COVID-19 pandemic, as the authors conclude. For both forms of diabetes, a higher incidence was found in regions with high than in regions with low socioeconomic deprivation. Overall, the results underline the need for appropriate prevention strategies.
The full article entitled Incidence of type 1 and type 2 diabetes before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany: analysis of routine data from 2015 to 2021 can be found here.