SwedishShorts

Bedbug invasion. More suffer from diabetes.  

• 

  Three times as many young Swedes suffer from type 1 diabetes than previously thought.

• Bedbug invasion
  Sleep tight and don’t let the bedbugs bite. For years, bedbugs (”vägglöss”) were nearly extinct in Sweden, but they’ve made a comeback, and they continue to increase in numbers. In 2006, there were 1,084 decontaminations for bedbug problems in Sweden; in 2011 that number increased to 11,753, and last year there were as many as 18,877. According to the insurance company Trygg Hansa, a million Swedes risk having bedbugs within a few years. ”It could become a catastrophe if it continues like this,” says Håkan Franzén at Trygg Hansa. ”We have to put a stop to it.”

• More suffer from diabetes
  Many more young Swedes suffer from insulin-dependent diabetes than previously thought. Sweden actually has the second to highest incidence of type 1 diabetes in the world—only Finland has more, in proportion to their population. But only a few countries, Sweden among them, have researched what the disease looks like among young people. And the studies that have been conducted showed that fewer people fall sick in these age groups. ”Consequently, it has been thought that the increased onset of the disease among children is offset by a decline in incidences among youngsters and young adults,” says Araz Rawshani, physician at Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Göteborg. Since Sweden is one of the few countries that has investigated this particular age group, other countries have relied on Sweden’s findings. But the material that is the basis for this assumption is very small. Rawshani and his colleagues instead proceeded with data from the Swedish Prescribed Drug Register. They counted all the women and men who had received prescriptions for insulin, while they excluded patients who received their diabetes treatment in the form of pills, which is only given those with type 2 diabetes. The research was published in the journal Diabetologia. It turned out that the number of people developing insulin-dependent diabetes in the ages 15-34 is in reality three times as high as previously believed. Instead of 200 young Swedes, it’s closer to 600 falling ill every year. ”We’ve thought this group got smaller and smaller, when it reality it's three times as big as we thought. This knowledge is of great importance when it comes to how we invest our resources for this group.”