AimTo provide comprehensive real‐world evidence on societal diabetes‐attributable costs in Denmark.MethodsNational register data are linked on an individual level through unique central personal registration numbers in Denmark. All patients in the Danish National Diabetes Register in 2011 (N = 318 729) were included in this study. Complication status was defined according to data from the Danish National Hospital Register. Diabetes‐attributable costs were calculated as the difference between costs of patients with diabetes and the expected costs given the annual resource consumption of the diabetes‐free population.ResultsSocietal costs attributable to diabetes were estimated to be at least 4.27 billion EUR in 2011, corresponding to 14,349 EUR per patient‐year. A twofold higher healthcare resource usage was found for patients with diabetes as compared with the diabetes‐free population. Attributable costs, grouped according to different components, were 732 million EUR for primary and secondary care services, 153 million EUR for pharmaceutical drugs, 851 million EUR for nursing services, 1.77 billion EUR in lost productivity and 761 million EUR for additional costs. A steep increase in diabetes‐attributable costs was found for patients with major complications compared with patients without complications across all cost components. For attributable healthcare costs this increase was estimated to be 6,992 EUR per person‐year after controlling for potential confounders.ConclusionsNearly half of the total costs of patients with diabetes can be attributed directly to their diabetes. The majority of costs are incurred among patients with major complications pointing to the importance of secondary preventive efforts among patients with diabetes.

Denmark is a low-incidence lupus area but lupus prevalence is increasing slowly. I-SLE is a disease variant that may eventually convert into D-SLE.

In 1995 all systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) patients in the county of Funen were retrieved from four separate and independent sources as part of an 8-year prospective study to determine the pattern of disease activity and damage accumulation in a community based lupus cohort of predominantly Scandinavian ancestry. Incident cases were subsequently identified by surveillance of these sources. Established and new cases underwent annual, structured interviews, clinical examination and blood sampling. The Systemic Lupus Erythematosus Diseases Activity Index SLEDAI and Systemic Lupus International Collaborating Clinics SLICC scores were calculated. Flares were defined as modified - SLEDAI >or= 4. The annual flare rate in definite SLE (D-SLE) was 0.21 (95%CI 0.18-0.24) versus 0.03 (95%CI 0.01-0.07) in incomplete SLE (I-SLE). Forty-three per cent of the entire study population had no disease exacerbations. Infections requiring hospital admission and thrombocytopenia were significantly more frequent among patients with relapsing disease (p < 0.04-0.01). Patients with flares had slightly shorter disease duration and were younger at disease onset than patients with a quiescent course. The most recently diagnosed patients had the lowest annual rate of damage accrual. According to flare rate, two major subsets of almost equal size were identified - one having a long quiescent course, the other exhibiting relapses alternating with remissions. An increased risk of flares was associated with short disease duration and younger age at disease onset, infections requiring hospital admission and thrombocytopenia. Temporal damage increment was the lowest in the most recently diagnosed patients.