How we count matters – infections are a major cause of death among patients with type 2 diabetes

Type 2 diabetes (T2D) has systemic effects that increase risk of infection in all body systems. Unlike the single grouping for cancers, infections are coded across body systems in addition to specific infectious disease chapters in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD). In a new study, Carey and colleagues use data for a large English population in the period 2015–2019 to provide an overall picture of the role played by infections regardless of where they occur in the body.1 They demonstrate how the importance of infections as a cause of death among people with T2D is underestimated when only considering infection specific chapters.