No awards ceremony is complete without the ribbon du jour – a cause celebrated and promoted by a variety of celebrity backers and their cheerleaders in the media. Of course, it’s refreshing to see the highly visible throw their weight behind something worthy, and bringing the plight of sufferers to the attention of the world. Breast cancer, HIV/AIDS – these causes have benefitted enormously from the increased visibility lent to their campaigns.

But one pandemic, which led to nearly four million deaths in 2010, gets very little airtime. Perhaps appropriately, it is often referred to as ‘the silent killer,’ and until recently no one, even in the media, paid it any particular heed.

The most common forms of diabetes mellitus are classed into two major and distinct categories. The common image of the disease, of someone injecting themselves with vials of insulin every day, is in fact the far less common variety, known as Type I diabetes. It is characterized by the patient’s pancreas being unable to produce any insulin, a hormone that stimulates the absorption of blood glucose by muscles, liver and fat tissue.

Type II diabetes, formally known as non-insulin dependent or adult onset diabetes, is a very different prospect altogether. Due to the startling rise of this condition alarm bells are finally ringing. It is usually triggered by an unhealthy lifestyle – diet, lack of exercise and stress all conspire to activate the metabolic pathology, especially in the presence of genetic predisposition. The most worrying trend is the ever-dropping age at which Type II diabetes now onsets. Two or three generations ago, the majority of Type II diabetes patients were elderly, as pancreatic function declines with age. But, along with the genetic predisposition that may have affected the sufferer’s parents, the stress and unhealthy living conditions that make up modern lives has hyper-accelerated the onset of this disease.

It is a chronic disease that affects people for a long time before its symptoms become evident, hence the ‘silent killer’ tag.  Earlier onset will mean that patients need to be treated with expensive drugs for an extensive period of time. Besides treating diabetes, additional drugs are needed to treat any coexisting conditions that were caused or made worse by diabetes. Many diabetes patients can go undiagnosed for years before they are sick. By the time it gets diagnosed, the damages caused by the presence of high sugar levels could already be severe and have affected major organs such as the heart, kidney and liver. It also raises lipid levels and, together with the cardiovascular complication, can increase the risk of strokes.

"I think people in general are aware of diabetes but they are not educated on what it actually causes,” says Federico Gallo, Associate Vice President and Head of the Diabetes Therapy Monitors/Emerging Markets in Synovate Healthcare. “It is simply seen as an elevated level of sugar in blood, and rarely seen as the cause of death. The general population usually thinks that patients with diabetes die of heart attack, stroke or kidney disease, but they don’t know that these conditions were caused and made worse by diabetes.” It is also a disease that has a less dramatic impact in the minds of the public, he adds. “Everyone is afraid of cancer because it brings pain, suffering and the body deteriorates. With diabetes it is different – it’s a slow progressing disease that doesn’t affect the body in as a dramatic way as cancer.” 

Mercifully, particularly for the 285 million people affected worldwide by diabetes (according to World Diabetes Foundation), awareness is improving and the press is slowly realising that we are in the midst of a situation the American Diabetes Association (ADA) has described as being the crisis point. “Twenty percent of Americans suffer from diabetes or pre-diabetes,” claims the ADA website. “These figures constitute an epidemic.” Their claim, and it may even be under-estimating the scale of the problem, means that at least one in five citizens of one of the world’s most developed nations suffers from a potentially life-threatening condition.

We’re perhaps becoming more aware, but according to Gallo we are still a long way off from where we need to be. So what can be done? “I think the first step, and I am sure that most of the governments are now embracing this, is to raise the national awareness by launching national campaigns and educating everyone on the risks of our current lifestyles. This would be similar to when HIV was discovered and youths and adults were educated on the disease and prevention. It is now recognised that diabetes is a pandemic and, in the same way as AIDS, everyone needs to understand its effects –that diabetes is more than being able to produce enough insulin in their body. Children need to be reached at school and adults need to be presented with the facts and possibly be educated on their kids’ well-being, because they are the ones that are going to be the most likely to develop diabetes.”  

For more information, read Synovate’s white paper The Diabetes Pandemic and the Race for the Optimal Treatment or contact Federico Gallo, Associate Vice President at Synovate Healthcare, at federico.gallo@synovate.com.