Living with type 2 diabetes (T2D) may double the risk of developing sepsis—with those aged younger than 60 years and men particularly susceptible, according to a long-term community-based study in Australia, being presented at this year's Annual Meeting of The European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD), Vienna (15-19 Sept).
"An association between type 2 diabetes and sepsis has been noted in some earlier studies," said lead author Professor Wendy Davis from the University of Western Australia, Australia. "Our study, in a large community-based sample of adults, confirms a strong relationship even after adjustment for a number of potential risk factors and the competing risk of death from unrelated causes, which may have occurred in people at high risk of sepsis before they developed sepsis, thus leading to overestimation of the incidence of sepsis if ignored."
She added, "The best way to prevent sepsis is to quit smoking, normalise high blood sugar, and prevent the onset of the micro- and macrovascular complications of diabetes. That's why this study is important."
Sepsis can occur as a result of any type of infection, and refers to a severe, life threatening, uncontrolled response to infection that can lead to organ failure and critical illness. More than 10% of people who develop sepsis die, and it is a leading cause of death worldwide.
Previous studies have found that people living with T2D have a 2- to 6-fold increased risk of sepsis and worse associated illness and death compared to people without diabetes, but contemporary data are limited.
To plug this knowledge gap, Australian researchers explored the incidence of sepsis in a community-dwelling cohort of people taking part in The Fremantle Diabetes Study Phase II—a longitudinal observational study conducted in a multi-ethnic urban community of 157,000 in Australia.
Researchers identified 1,430 adults with T2D at the time they enrolled between 2008 and 2011 who were matched with 5,720 de-identified individuals without T2D based on age, sex, and postcode. The average age of the participants at enrolment was 66 years, and 52% were men.
Their health was tracked, using linked health records, until the first record of incident sepsis, new onset diabetes (in the matched cohort), death, or the end of 2021, whichever came first.
At enrolment, 2.0% of those with T2D had a prior hospitalisation for/with sepsis versus 0.8% of their matched counterparts without diabetes. During an average 10 years of follow-up, 169 (11.8%) participants with T2D and 288 (5.0%) of their matched counterparts developed sepsis.
After adjustment for potential confounders including age, sex, prior hospitalisation for sepsis and having other chronic conditions, T2D was associated with double the risk of developing sepsis.
