Patterns In The Prevalence Of Diabetes And Incidence Of Diabetic Complications In People With And Without An Intellectual Disability In Dutch Primary Care: Insights From A Population-Based Data-Linkage Study

Aims: To conduct an epidemiological analysis of patterns observed in diabetes care provided to individuals with and without intellectual disabilities (ID) in primary care settings. Methods: An ID-cohort (N = 21,203) was compared with a control group of similar age and sex from the general Dutch population (N = 267,628). Distinctive data for diabetes (both type 1 and type 2) and related complications were retrieved from national databases. Results: The prevalence of diabetes was higher in people with ID than in the general population (9.9% versus 6.6%). Largest differences were seen in younger age groups. Women with ID had diabetes more often than men with ID. Complications were less common in people with ID than in the general population (IR 58.6 vs. 70.4). In particular, cardiological complications were noted less, while surgical interventions and hospitalization occurred more often. Conclusions: Although diabetes was 1.5 times more prevalent in people with ID than in other people, related complications were less common, followed different patterns and were more severe than in the general population. Future research is needed to understand of the underlying causal mechanisms and to lower the risk of severe diabetic complications among people with ID. ? 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of Primary Care Diabetes Europe. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).