2023-11-14 12:39:56
Today it is estimated that there are “over 4 million people affected by diabetes in Italy”. This is what emerges from an integrated reading of the Passi and Passi d’Argento surveillance systems, coordinated by the Higher Institute of Health (ISS) in collaboration with the Regions, starting from the data collected in the period 2016-2022 on an overall sample of the population resident in Italy of over 285 thousand people over 18 years of age. The prevalence of diabetes changes greatly with age, and if before the age of 50 it remains below 5%, after this age it rapidly rises up to 23% around the age of 80. Today is World Diabetes Day.
“Rather stable over time – continues the ISS – the prevalence of diabetes is characterized by a geographical gradient to the detriment of the southern regions (among those over 65 it is equal to 25% in the South-Islands compared to 15% in the North and 18% in Center) and by an important social gradient, to the detriment of less educated people or those with greater economic difficulties; after 65 years of age the prevalence of diabetes, among people who report having great difficulty in making it to the end of the month, reaches and exceeds 30% (with a difference of almost 10 percentage points compared to the wealthiest people)”.
According to the ISS, “smoking, alcohol, sedentary lifestyle, poor consumption of fruit and vegetables and excess weight represent the main behavioral risk factors implicated in the onset of most chronic pathologies, such as tumors, cardiovascular diseases, respiratory diseases chronic diseases and also diabetes. Furthermore, diabetes is also strongly associated with cardiovascular risk, together with hypertension, hypercholesterolemia and obesity. For these reasons, while on the one hand it might not be surprising to observe the adoption of non-compliant lifestyles among people with diabetes healthy (because presumably causes or contributory causes of its onset), on the other hand, this observation should be worrying since prevention and health promotion must remain objectives to be pursued even after a diagnosis of a chronic pathology”.
“Stopping smoking, moderating alcohol consumption, doing physical activity, maintaining a healthy body weight, keeping hypertension and hypercholesterolemia under control are important not only for primary prevention but also after a diagnosis of diabetes, like any other chronic disease, both for better management of the disease itself and to avoid the most serious complications, and to prevent the onset of other chronic pathologies associated with these same factors”, recall the ISS experts.
The Passi and Passi d’Argento data “show that people who report a diagnosis of diabetes still maintain unhealthy habits, which expose them to a greater risk of a worse course of the disease, are decidedly more exposed than the rest of the population to risk factors cardiovascular diseases (obesity, hypercholesterolemia and hypertension) and are affected by other chronic pathologies (cardiovascular diseases, tumors, renal failure and depressive symptoms), more frequently than others”, concludes the ISS.
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