• Posted May 16, 2025

Adults Diagnosed With Type 1 Diabetes Face Heart Health Issues, Risk Of Early Death

FRIDAY, May 16, 2025 (HealthDay News) — People who develop type 1 diabetes in adulthood have a higher risk of heart disease and death, a new study says.

However, these patients can improve their odds through healthy lifestyle habits, researchers reported May 14 in the European Heart Journal.

“We show that the prognosis can be significantly improved by preventing smoking and obesity and improving glucose control, not least in people diagnosed at older ages,” senior researcher Sofia Carlsson, a senior lecturer with the Institute of Environmental Medicine at Karolinska Institute in Sweden, said in a news release.

Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease in which the immune system turns on the beta cells in the pancreas that produce insulin, destroying the body’s ability to produce the hormone.

As a result, people with type 1 diabetes must take insulin to live.

Type 1 diabetes used to be called juvenile diabetes because it’s typically diagnosed in kids, but the disease can start at any time of life, researchers said in background notes.

For the new study, researchers tracked nearly 10,200 Swedish adults diagnosed with type 1 diabetes between 2001 and 2020, comparing them to nearly 510,000 healthy people.

Results showed that people diagnosed with diabetes as adults had a higher risk of heart disease, as well as premature death from any cause, including cancer and infections.

Specifically, type 1 diabetics had a 30% increased risk of heart attack, stroke or other major heart disease, the study says.

They also had a 71% increased risk of early death from any cause, results show.

“The main reasons for the poor prognosis are smoking, overweight/obesity and poor glucose control. We found that they were less likely to use assistive devices, such as insulin pumps,” lead researcher Yuxia Wei said in a news release. Wei is a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Environmental Medicine at Karolinska Institute.

Researchers plan to continue researching adult-onset type 1 diabetes, including risk factors for the disease and how it can affect other health problems. They also want to look into the best way to treat the disease.

“We hope to shed light on these issues in the coming years,” Carlsson said.

More information

The American Diabetes Association has more on type 1 diabetes.

SOURCE: Karolinska Institute, news release, May 14, 2025