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Abstract
Diabetic foot is a severe public health issue, yet rare studies investigated its global epidemiology. Here we performed a systematic review and meta-analysis through searching PubMed, EMBASE, ISI Web of science, and Cochrane database. We found that that global diabetic foot ulcer prevalence was 6.3% (95%CI: 5.4–7.3%), which was higher in males (4.5%, 95%CI: 3.7–5.2%) than in females (3.5%, 95%CI: 2.8–4.2%), and higher in type 2 diabetic patients (6.4%, 95%CI: 4.6–8.1%) than in type 1 diabetics (5.5%, 95%CI: 3.2–7.7%). North America had the highest prevalence (13.0%, 95%CI: 10.0–15.9%), Oceania had the lowest (3.0%, 95% CI: 0.9–5.0%), and the prevalence in Asia, Europe, and Africa were 5.5% (95%CI: 4.6–6.4%), 5.1% (95%CI: 4.1–6.0%), and 7.2% (95%CI: 5.1–9.3%), respectively. Australia has the lowest (1.5%, 95%CI: 0.7–2.4%) and Belgium has the highest prevalence (16.6%, 95%CI: 10.7–22.4%), followed by Canada (14.8%, 95%CI: 9.4–20.1%) and USA (13.0%, 95%CI: 8.3–17.7%). The patients with diabetic foot ulcer were older, had a lower body mass index, longer diabetic duration, and had more hypertension, diabetic retinopathy, and smoking history than patients without diabetic foot ulceration. Our results provide suggestions for policy makers in deciding preventing strategy of diabetic foot ulceration in the future.
Global prevalence of diabetic foot is 6.3% (95%CI: 5.4–7.3%), and the prevalence in North America, Asia, Europe, Africa and Oceania was 13.0% (95%CI: 10.0–15.9%), 5.5% (95%CI: 4.6–6.4%), 5.1% (95%CI: 4.1–6.0%), 7.2% (95%CI: 5.1–9.3%), and 3.0% (95% CI: 0.9–5.0%).
Diabetic foot was more prevalent in males than in females, and more prevalent in type 2 diabetic foot patients than in type 1 diabetic foot patients.
The patients with diabetic foot were older, had a lower body mass index, longer diabetic duration, and had more hypertension, diabetic retinopathy, and smoking history than patients without diabetic foot.
Key messages
Disclosure statement
The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of this article.
Funding
This study was supported by grants from National Natural Science Foundation of China Grant Award (81570736, 81570737,81270906, 81370947, 81500612, 81400832, and 81300651), the Project of National Key Clinical Division, the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2012M521050), Jiangsu Province’s Key Discipline of Medicine (XK201105), Jiangsu Province’s Key Provincial Talents Program (RC2011011), Jiangsu Key Laboratory for Molecular Medicine (BM2007208), Jiangsu Province’s Project of standardized diagnosis and treatment of key diseases (2015604), Jiangsu Postdoctoral Science Foundation, the Key Project of Nanjing Clinical Medical Science, Nanjing outstanding youth fund projects (JQX13010), Nanjing science and technology development projects (2013ZD005), and Medical and health research projects of Nanjing Health Bureau (YKK14055 and YKK11092).
