The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on diabetes-related mortality

Official statistics on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on diabetes mortality in the US were obtained from the Wonder (Wide-Ranging, Online Data for Epidemiologic Research) database, a repository maintained by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that allows specific queries to analyze the unique causes of death of the entire US population in a given time period. The age-adjusted death rate (×100,000) for diabetes mellitus in the overall US population showed a notable increase in 2020 (24.8; 95 %CI, 24.6–25.0) compared with the previous 2 pre-pandemic years 2018 (21.4; 95 %CI, 21.2–21.5) and 2019 (21.6; 95 %CI, 21.4–21.7), then displayed a further increase in 2021 (25.4; 95 %CI, 25.2–25.6) and a slight decrease in 2022 (24.1; 95 %CI, 24.2–23.9). The cumulative diabetes-related mortality increased by 17.0 % in the first two pandemic years 2020–2021 compared to the last two years before the pandemic (2018–2019), with a highly significant variation throughout the study period (one-way ANOVA: 567; p < 0.001). An identical trend was observed for diabetes-related mortality in men (one-way ANOVA: f: 248; p < 0.001) and in women (one-way ANOVA: f: 297; p < 0.001), with a death rate constantly higher in males than in females. The increase in diabetes-related mortality in the first two years of the pandemic compared to the previous two years was 16.3 % in men and 17.2 % in women, respectively.