Diabetes affected over 30 million U.S. adults in 2015, and its comorbidities remained among the leading causes of premature death and reduced quality of life. However, little is known about the secular trend of diabetes comorbidities in the last 20 years. Sample-weighted prevalence of twelve common comorbidities of diabetes was estimated using data from 52,842 adults aged ≥18 years who had diabetes in the National Health Interview Survey from 1997 through 2016, with age-standardized to the 2000 U.S. population. We ranked the prevalence [% (SE)] of twelve diabetes comorbidities, and the top five were hypertension [53.7(3.1)], arthritis [33.2(3.1)], asthma [17.2(2.9)], coronary heart disease [CHD: 14.4(2.3)]), and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease [COPD: 9.1(2.3)]. From 1997 to 2016, the estimated prevalence (%) of diabetes comorbidities including hypertension (47.8 to 59.7), asthma (13.2 to 21.0), cancer (7.6 to 10.4), and liver cirrhosis (3.0 to 4.1) continuingly increased (P<0.05), while CHD (15.4 to 13.4), COPD (10.1 to 8.0), and hepatitis (5.5 to 2.9) declined (P<0.05). Such trends were similar among subgroups stratified by gender or by race. In the past two decades, along with continuing increase of diabetes, the rates of its comorbidities including hypertension, asthma, cancer, and liver cirrhosis showed increasing trends, whereas the rates of CHD, COPD, and hepatitis exhibited decreasing trends in the U.S. adults.
D. Sun: None. T. Zhou: None. X. Li: None. Y. Heianza: None. X. Shang: None. V. Fonseca: Consultant; Self; Abbott. Board Member; Self; American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists. Consultant; Self; Eli Lilly and Company. Stock/Shareholder; Self; Amgen Inc.. Consultant; Self; Asahi Kasei Corporation, AstraZeneca, Novo Nordisk Inc., ADOCIA, Intarcia Therapeutics, Inc., Sanofi-Aventis. L. Qi: None.
