Recent Statistics on Diabetes

The death rate from diabetes in 1957 was higher than in both 1956 and 1955. For the United States as a whole provisional figures for the year 1957, based upon a 10 per cent sample of death certificates, showed a 4 per cent increase over 1956 (table 1). In the urban population of-the United States, represented by Industrial policyholders of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, the death rate was 2 per cent above that for 1956. The rise in mortality attributed to diabetes was concentrated in the last quarter of the year when the death rate from the disease was over 15 per cent higher than in the corresponding period of 1956. For the first nine months, the rates for the two years were approximately the same.