CHICAGO – Diabetic eye disease is expected to triple in the United States by the year 2050, investigators from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported at the annual scientific sessions of the American Diabetes Association.
“The future changes in the number of people with diabetes and the U.S. population will likely lead to dramatic increases in the number of Americans with diabetic retinopathy, glaucoma, and cataract. Efforts to prevent, delay, and better manage the diabetes epidemic will help in reducing the burden of diabetes eye complications,” said Dr. Jinan Saaddine and her associates in a poster presentation.
According to a recent estimate, there will be 48 million people diagnosed with diabetes by the year 2050 (Diabetes Care 2006;29:2114-6). Using that number, with data from the National Health Interview Survey and a series of articles on eye disease prevalence published in the April 2004 issue of the Archives of Ophthalmology, the authors projected that the number of people in the United States with diabetic retinopathy will increase from 5.5 million in 2004 to 16.0 million in 2050. The number with vision-threatening diabetic retinopathy is also expected to triple over that period, from 1.2 million to 3.4 million.
At the same time, the number of diabetic patients with cataracts will triple from 3.0 million to 9.9 million, and the number with glaucoma will more than quadruple, from 335,600 to 1,447,000, they predicted.
The increases in diabetic retinopathy are expected to be especially pronounced for those aged 65 years and older, with overall rates rising from 2.5 million to 9.9 million, and rates of vision-threatening disease from 0.5 to 1.9 million. Glaucoma among Hispanics with diabetes is also likely to rise particularly sharply, with a 12-fold increase in those aged 65 years and over.