Mass. diabetes deaths spike during pandemic
Image | Flickr | Alan Levine
NovoLog, an insulin drug for treating diabetes
Massachusetts hasn't suffered only from the coronavirus pandemic in the past year, but also a rise in another major cause of death: diabetes.
Diabetes deaths were up 19% statewide during the pandemic though late November, among the largest increases in the country, indicating how much so-called excess deaths — those that can't be traced definitively to coronavirus but whose cause experts tie as a potential factor — have given the state and the country a much larger death rate than the pandemic alone would indicate.
Massachusetts is tied for the eighth largest percentage increase in diabetes deaths during the pandemic, according to an analysis of U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates by The New York Times.
Diabetes was the state's eighth leading cause of death in 2017, according to the latest CDC data. The 1,321 diabetes-related deaths that year would give Massachusetts an increase of roughly 250 last year during the pandemic. The state's diabetes death rate normally is the country's second lowest.
Coronavirus could have been the leading cause of death in Massachusetts in 2020, or at least close to it. The state finished 2020 with at least 12,432 confirmed pandemic deaths, plus a few hundred more that are suspected of being caused by the virus. In 2017, only cancer led to more deaths: 12,934, according to the latest data from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. Heart disease was next at 12,140, but no other causes were remotely close.
Confirmed coronavirus deaths have surpassed 350,000 nationally, according to Johns Hopkins University in Maryland. The New York Times analysis found other major causes of death have spiked during the pandemic, including 15% for diabetes, 12% for Alzheimer's and dementia, and 11% each for high blood pressure and pneumonia and flu.
At least 377,000 more people in the United States have died than usual since the coronavirus began though mid-December, according to the Times. Pandemic-related causes that could lead to those increases include strains on healthcare systems, inadequate access to supplies like ventilators, or people avoiding hospitals for fear of exposure to the coronavirus, the Times said.
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