Not just obesity
Scientists have named one of the main causes of diabetes
The rapid increase in the number of diabetics in all countries of the world may be associated not only with the epidemic of obesity, but also with air pollution, according to an article published in the medical journal Lancet Planetary Health (Bowe et al., The 2016 global and national burden of diabetes mellitus attributable to PM2·5 air pollution).
"Our study shows that the relationship between the level of air pollution and the incidence of diabetes exists in all countries of the world. The number of diabetics begins to grow even with a minimum level of air pollution, which is considered acceptable by WHO. All this indicates that these standards need to be changed," said Ziyad Al–Ali from Washington University in St. Louis (in a press release, Air pollution contributes significantly to diabetes globally – VM).
According to official statistics, today about 3.7 million Russians suffer from diabetes mellitus. Experts of the International Diabetes Federation suggest that their number may exceed 12.7 million. In the United States, the number of diabetics exceeds 30 million, and in the world as a whole – 420 million people.
Recently, Chinese doctors decided to assess how the spread of diabetes affects the life expectancy of residents of the country, and came to the conclusion that the acquisition of this disease shortens the life span by almost nine years, and their American colleagues found that diabetes is now associated with about 12% of deaths in the United States.
According to Al-Ali and his colleagues, today most doctors believe that the number of diabetics has begun to grow rapidly in the world due to the development of the obesity epidemic, which has engulfed not only developed, but also many developing countries, including China.
On the other hand, as the scientists themselves have already noticed, diabetes epidemics have arisen in those countries where there are no problems with obesity yet, for example, in Afghanistan, Papua New Guinea or some African countries. Trying to understand what this could be related to, scientists analyzed all possible differences between states with a large and small number of diabetics.
Analyzing these data, doctors found out that all the countries covered by the "epidemic" of diabetes were united by one problem – a high level of air pollution. Having discovered a similar dependence, Al-Ali and his colleagues tried to estimate how many people got diabetes due to car exhaust and industrial emissions.
To do this, scientists combined the results of observations of the health of diabetics and healthy people in the United States and some other countries of the world and superimposed these data on air pollution maps prepared by NASA satellites and ground-based meteorological stations.
As these calculations have shown, the risk of getting diabetes begins to grow even with relatively low concentrations of aerosols and harmful substances in the air exceeding 2.4 micrograms per cubic meter. For example, people living with pollution of ten micrograms per cubic meter are 21% more likely to suffer from diabetes than residents of more prosperous regions.
In general, air poisoning, according to doctors, increases the number of diabetics by 3.2 million every year, which is about 14% of the total number of such diagnoses. In the future, if industrial and automotive emissions continue to grow, the contribution of air pollution to the development of the diabetes epidemic will only grow.
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