Market Statistics: Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM)

The incidence of diabetes has escalated to a national epidemic. Pharmaceutical, biotech and medical device companies areinvesting millions of research and development dollars to find treatments to stop or mitigate this disease.

Prevalence of diagnosed and undiagnosed diabetes in the United States, all ages, 2007:

Total: 23.6 million people, or 7.8 percent of the population, have diabetes.

Diagnosed: 17.9 million people

Undiagnosed: 5.7 million people

Approximately 1.6 million new cases of T2DM were diagnosed in 2007, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention documents state this trend is expected to continue. It was the seventh leading cause of death in 2006, and mortality from T2DM is likely to be under-reported. ¹

Complications of diabetes in the United States include heart disease and stroke, high blood pressure, blindness, kidney disease, nervous system disease, amputations, dental disease, complications of pregnancy, other complications such as biochemical imbalances that can cause diabetic ketoacidosis and hyperosmolar (nonketotic) coma, and an increased susceptibility to illnesses such as pneumonia or influenza.

Progression of T2DM is determined by whether the patient is able to maintain his HbA1c level below 7 percent. If not, patients progress to oral medications (53 percent), oral medications with insulin (11 percent), or to insulin only (17 percent).

The cost to society is enormous. In 2007, the total economic cost of diabetes was estimated to be $174 billion. This is an increase of $42 billion since 2002, a 32 percent increase that means the dollar amount has risen by an astounding average of about $7 billion each year. The 2007 per capita medical cost per diabetic was $11,000, and the amount directly attributable to diabetes was $6,649.

In the table below, the progressive costs of diabetic complications is shown. Diabetic complications grow progressively over the years, resulting in a cumulative total cost for treatment of an average of $47,000 per diabetic patient over a 22-year period.

Source: *www.diabetes.org, **Caro, et. al, “Lifetime Costs of Complications Resulting from Type 2 Diabetes in the US, Diabetes Care,” Vol.25, No. 3, March 2002

Diabetes creates co-morbidities that touch almost every disease state addressed by pharma, biotech and medical devices. It is no secret in any of these industries that diabetes is a complex disease, that its patients are an under-served market and that this is a significant opportunity for innovators in our industry.

References

1. 2007 CDC National Diabetes Fact Sheet

Maria Shepherd is president at Data Decision Group, a medical device and life sciences strategic marketing, market research and mergers and acquisitions support firm.