- Posted December 4, 2025
People With Diabetes Face Dramatically Higher Odds Of Sudden Cardiac Death
THURSDAY, Dec. 4, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Diabetes can be literally heart-stopping, a new study asserts.
People with either type 1 or type 2 diabetes have a dramatically higher risk of sudden cardiac death, which occurs when the heart stops beating, researchers reported today in the European Heart Journal.
They also have a shorter life expectancy on average, partly due to sudden cardiac death, results show.
“We found that sudden cardiac death occurs more frequently in people with diabetes across all age groups, and that sudden cardiac death has a substantial impact on the shortened life expectancy in individuals with diabetes,” lead researcher Dr. Tobias Skjelbred, a doctoral student with Copenhagen University Hospital in Denmark, said in a news release.
For the study, researchers looked at health data for the entire Danish population in 2010. That year more than 54,000 deaths occurred in the country, including nearly 6,900 cases of sudden cardiac death.
People with type 2 diabetes were 6.5 times more likely to die from sudden cardiac arrest and those with type 1 diabetes were 3.7 times more likely compared to people without the condition, results show.
Young people with diabetes face the greatest risk, researchers said. Those under 50 had a seven-fold higher risk of sudden cardiac death.
Sudden cardiac death rates were “highest in the 30 to 40 year age group among those with type 1 diabetes (22.7) and in the 40 to 50 year age group among those with type 2 diabetes (6.0),” noted Dr. Tanno Han, an associate professor of experimental cardiology with the University of Amsterdam in The Netherlands, in an editorial accompanying the new study.
This higher risk for cardiac arrest takes a toll on the life expectancy of those with diabetes, results show.
Average life expectancy was more than 14 years shorter for people with type 1 diabetes and nearly 8 years shorter for those with type 2 diabetes, researchers.
Sudden cardiac death accounted for 3.4 years of life lost among people with type 1 diabetes and 2.7 years for people with type 2 diabetes.
Diabetes might increase risk of sudden cardiac death in several ways, Skjelbred said. The condition increases risk of heart disease and irregular heartbeat through high blood sugar levels and nerve damage.
“This is an observational study, meaning that we can see a link between diabetes and sudden cardiac death, but we cannot prove that one causes the other,” Skjelbred said. “Sudden cardiac death is challenging to predict and prevent, but these findings reinforce the importance for people with diabetes to work with their clinicians to reduce cardiovascular risk.”
Cutting-edge diabetes drugs like SGLT2 inhibitors and GLP-1 medications might have reduced this risk in recent years, by helping people better control heir blood sugar, Skjelbred said.
People at high risk of sudden cardiac death can be fitted with an implant that can shock their heart into restarting or recovering a regular rhythm, Skjelbred noted. Future research might look into which people with diabetes might benefit from such an implant, or from other strategies to prevent heart trouble.
People with diabetes might also benefit from smartwatches that can detect sudden cardiac arrest and call 911 on behalf of someone who’s collapsed, Tan said.
“Such solutions may have particular relevance for type 1 diabetes patients, because the proportion of unwitnessed sudden cardiac arrest events is higher in these patients than in the general population,” Tan wrote in the editorial.
More information
The Cleveland Clinic has more on sudden cardiac death.
SOURCE: European Heart Journal, news release, Dec. 4, 2025
