Trends in premature mortality from diabetes mellitus in Costa Rica in the period 2000–2020

ABSTRACT

Objectives

To analyze the temporal trends of premature mortality from diabetes in Costa Rica in the period 2000–2020, at a national level and by province, and the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on diabetes mortality during the year 2020

Methods

We studied the temporal trends of mortality from diabetes in Costa Rica in the period between 2000 and 2020. Age-standardized mortality rates and corresponding 95% confidence intervals were calculated for each year, sex and province.

Results

We analyzed the data of 17,968 deceased persons. The mean age was 72.5 years (range 1 to 109 years), and 51.5% of the population (n = 9253) was younger than 75 years. In both men and women, we observed a significant decrease in mortality from 2000 to 2014, followed by the opposite trend from 2014 to 2020, with average yearly increases of 13.9% in men and 11.6% in women.

Conclusions

Premature mortality from diabetes has been growing from 2014. The COVID-19 pandemic changed the mortality pattern, increasing premature diabetes deaths in Costa Rica in 2020.

KEYWORDS:

• Diabetes mellitus
• trends
• premature mortality
• Costa Rica

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the National Institute of Statistics and Census of Costa Rica (INEC) for their quick and efficient provision of data.

Declaration of financial/other relationships

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.

Reviewer disclosures

Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Universities, the European Union and Miguel Hernández of Elche University, as part of the ‘Spanish university system retraining programme 2021’ [grant number 04-541-4-2021-0110]. The project received a research grant from the Carlos III Institute of Health, Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (Spain), awarded on the call for the creation of Health Outcomes-Oriented Cooperative Research Networks (RICOR), with reference RD21/0016/0024, co-funded with European Union – NextGenerationEU funds.