22 DRUG DISCOVERY AND DEVELOPMENT
The diabetes challenge D
Dramatic increases in the number of people with diabetes around the world are causing experts to sound alarm bells.
L’augmentation dramatique du nombre de personnes atteintes de diabète dans le monde oblige les experts à tirer la sonnette d’alarme.
Experten schlagen Alarm, da die Anzahl der an Diabetes Erkrankten weltweit drastisch zunimmt.
r Robert Henry, President of Medicine and Science at the American Diabetes
Association, sees a fast-approaching calamity. “What is most startling is the number of new cases of diabetes in the US every year,” he says. “It’s close to 2 million people, and the number is rising. Te number of complications is increasing, too. Te cost of it all runs to 175 billion dollars per year.”
Te explosion in diabetes cases isn’t limited to the US. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 346 million people around
the globe have the disease, and diabetes-related deaths will double between 2005 and 2030.
Dr Gojka Roglic, a diabetes specialist at the WHO, says the spread of diabetes is unique among chronic non-communicable diseases. “Wherever it has been examined, there has been no reduction in the number of people getting the disease,” she says. Experts ascribe the global increase to mass urbanization, increased obesity rates and aging populations.
Dr. Henry points to alarming
statistics: “In Canada, the US and Mexico, the total number of patients was 33 million in 2000. By 2030 there will be 67 million. Diabetes growth will especially occur in places like Asia and Australasia, where the number will more than double between 2000 and 2030, from 82 million to 190 million plus.”
Dr. Roglic agrees. “Right now, we don’t know how far the increase can go,” she says. “In countries that have had a high prevalence of obesity, one-third of the population is getting diabetes – and at a relatively young age, which is the most productive time of life. Diabetes could cripple even well-developed and well- resourced countries.”
What is diabetes? Te US National Institutes of Health defines it simply as “a chronic disease marked by high levels of sugar in the blood.” Insulin, a hormone secreted by the pancreas, controls blood sugar (glucose).
In Type 1 diabetes, the body secretes little or no insulin, whereas in Type 2 diabetes – the far more common type – the body secretes insulin, though progressively less over time, and doesn’t respond to insulin properly.
Te exact cause of diabetes remains unknown. “Tere is a genetic component to both Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes,” says Dr Henry. “In Type 1 diabetes, much is known about susceptibility to diabetes through altered immunity or the factors that define why the body produces antibodies that destroy the insulin-producing cells. In addition, there are environmental triggers that appear to initiate the onset of Type 1 diabetes, and various suspects have been put forward, such as a viral infection or certain foods, such as
Fig. 1. Research is a vital part of the fight against diabetes.
www.scientistlive.com
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