The Centers for Disease Control said this weekend that rates of diabetes-related hospitalization and cases of kidney failure have fallen sharply over the past decade, signaling that progress is being made in the treatment of the disease. From 1994 to 2002 the rate of diabetes related hospitalizations fell from 55 to 36 per 1,000 diabetics. The kidney failure rate fell from 327 to 229 per 100,000.
Those improvements came at the same time that the overall number of diabetes cases have risen sharply. According to the CDC, the number of Americans with the disease has tripled over the past 20 years and now stands at 18 million. The announcement came on Saturday at the huge American Diabetes Association convention in San Diego.
- see this story from the Associated Press