Diabetes and climate change: current evidence and implications for people with diabetes, clinicians and policy stakeholders.
Jacqueline M RatterMichael RodenChristian HerderPublished in: Diabetologia (2023)
Climate change will be a major challenge for the world's health systems in the coming decades. Elevated temperatures and increasing frequencies of heat waves, wildfires, heavy precipitation and other weather extremes can affect health in many ways, especially if chronic diseases are already present. Impaired responses to heat stress, including compromised vasodilation and sweating, diabetes-related comorbidities, insulin resistance and chronic low-grade inflammation make people with diabetes particularly vulnerable to environmental risk factors, such as extreme weather events and air pollution. Additionally, multiple pathogens show an increased rate of transmission under conditions of climate change and people with diabetes have an altered immune system, which increases the risk for a worse course of infectious diseases. In this review, we summarise recent studies on the impact of climate-change-associated risk for people with diabetes and discuss which individuals may be specifically prone to these risk conditions due to their clinical features. Knowledge of such high-risk groups will help to develop and implement tailored prevention and management strategies to mitigate the detrimental effect of climate change on the health of people with diabetes.
Keyphrases
- climate change
- type diabetes
- cardiovascular disease
- glycemic control
- human health
- heat stress
- healthcare
- low grade
- public health
- insulin resistance
- risk factors
- air pollution
- mental health
- oxidative stress
- metabolic syndrome
- adipose tissue
- infectious diseases
- chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
- particulate matter
- heat shock
- risk assessment
- case control