Improvements in life expectancy in type 1 diabetes patients in the last six decades

Aims: To investigate the survival with diabetes inpatients treated with insulin from diagnosis. Subjects and methods: We analyzed 845 subjects, 55.9% males, registered at I. Pavel Bucharest Diabetes Centre, insulin-treated from diagnosis, aged <40 years and deceased between 1946 and 2005. We divided the subjects in two groups by age at diagnosis: group A <18 years and group B 18-39.99 years. We used 20 years time periods for year of death: 1946-1965, 1966-1985 and 1986-2005. Results: The mean age at diabetes onset was 30.36 +/- 8.04 years, disease duration at death 20.98 +/- 11.62 years and age at death 51.34 +/- 14.37 years. The mean increase in survival with diabetes was 19.3 years for group A and 15.9 years for group B. There was a significant decrease in infections in both groups. The increase in coronary heart diseases and stroke is evident only in group B. Conclusions: We found no changes in age at onset, which combined with an increase in survival with diabetes lead to a significant increase in age at death over the six decades analyzed. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.