Diabetes care must widen focus, adapt to risks

Opinion Diabetes care must widen focus, adapt to risks As the country's diabetes burden continues to grow, treating the condition as something that affects the mind as well as the body could mark a meaningful shift towards more effective care.

Key points

• 3 min readSep 7, 2026 06: 05 AM IST First published on: Sep 7, 2026 at 06: 05 AM IST.
• Type 2 diabetes is routinely treated as a blood-sugar disease, managed through monitoring glucose, weight, blood pressure and cholesterol.
• These findings create a robust case for broadening diabetes care beyond its traditional focus on physical risk factors.

For India, which carries one of the world's heaviest diabetes burdens – more than 101 million Indians live with diabetes and a further 136 million with prediabetes – this has solid implications.

Type 2 diabetes is routinely treated as a blood-sugar disease, managed through monitoring glucose, weight, blood pressure and cholesterol. A new study published in PLOS Medicine suggests that this approach misses an significant aspect: The disease does not follow quite the same path in men and women. Researchers followed almost 30, 000 residents diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes in England between 2010 and 2020 and discovered that men were more probable to develop cardiovascular disease and end-stage kidney disease, and that they generally reached such complications earlier. Women, meanwhile, were likelier to develop anxiety, depression and other mental-health conditions. Hypertension was the most common complication for both sexes and throughout all age groups. While part of the gap in mental-health diagnoses could reflect differences in how readily men and women seek care, the study exposes the limits of treating a varied disease with a standard template.

These findings create a robust case for broadening diabetes care beyond its traditional focus on physical risk factors. Treatment should pay closer attention to individual patients, irrespective of their sex, recognising that age, family history, lifestyle, duration of diabetes and access to healthcare have critical impact on outcomes. Primary-care doctors and diabetes clinics should be equipped to recognise mental-health needs and conduct simple screening for anxiety and depression, referring to specialists when necessary. Meanwhile, greater attention should be paid to regular cardiovascular and kidney assessment in men, without assuming that women are protected from these complications or that men are immune to psychological distress. As the country's diabetes burden continues to grow, treating the condition as something that affects the mind as well as the body could mark a meaningful shift towards more effective care.

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Taken together, the developments around diabetes care must widen focus, adapt to risks point to a situation that is still moving, and the coming days should bring more clarity.