Increasing prevalence of type 1 diabetes in older age may be a good sign

The increasing burden of a chronic disease is usually a bad sign for both health providers and the general population, but the results of our study are one of the exceptions (doi:10.1136/bmj-2023-078432). Counterintuitively, the increasing prevalence of type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) we found among people aged 65 and older is a good sign.1 It suggests that substantial improvements have occurred in the care that people with diabetes receive and provides cause for optimism for all people with a diagnosis of T1DM, especially younger patients.Many public health professionals might recall the classic illustration used in epidemiology classes to describe the burden of a disease, with the prevalence of a disease likened to a pond, the incidence to a waterfall that feeds the pond, and the mortality or cure to a brook that leaves the pond. The fullness of the pond (prevalence) is decided by both the inflow (incidence) and the…
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