A study presented recently at the annual congress of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes in Madrid highlights a surprising reciprocal relationship between asthma and type 2 diabetes. This analysis reveals that individuals suffering from diabetes are more likely to develop asthma, and vice versa.
Rates of asthma and type 2 diabetes are steadily increasing worldwide. What if these two pathologies, with deleterious effects on quality of life, were closely linked?
In any case, this is what Taiwanese researchers from the University of Taipei suggest. According to them, when a patient is diagnosed with one of these diseases, he should also be examined for the other.
To arrive at this surprising observation, the authors carried out a meta-analysis based on 14 studies and covering 17 million people across different continents and countries, including Europe (United Kingdom, Finland, Denmark), the United States United and Asia (Korea, Singapore, China and Israel).
Common causes?
The results showed that asthma and diabetes do have a reciprocal relationship: people with asthma are 28% more likely to develop type 2 diabetes than those who do not suffer from it. And those with type 2 diabetes are almost twice as likely (83%) to develop asthma.
These findings suggest that the two conditions may share common underlying causes such as hypertension.
“This relationship highlights the need for greater awareness among patients with type 2 diabetes or asthma“, explain the authors. “But also to consider preventive strategies to reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes in people with asthma. Prediabetes must be detected and treated promptly in asthmatic patients before it develops into type 2 diabetes..” This also implies better collaboration between pulmonology and diabetology specialists.
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