Herrington WG, et al. - Given that diabetes is a cause of at least a third of all deaths in Mexican adults aged 35–74 years, with the excess mortality due mainly to vascular disease, renal disease, infection, and acute diabetic crises, the researchers studied the effect of diabetes duration and glycaemic control on death rate ratios (RRs) for these causes and evaluated the relevance to cause-specific mortality of undiagnosed diabetes. For this analysis, about 100,000 women and 50,000 men aged 35 years or older from Mexico City were selected into a blood-based prospective study between April 14, 1998, and Sept 28, 2004, and followed up until Jan 1, 2016, for cause-specific mortality. They reported that the rates of death from causes strongly linked with diabetes increased steeply with duration of diabetes and were higher still among people with poor glycaemic control in Mexico. They suggested that delaying the onset of type 2 diabetes, as well as improving its treatment, was essential to reduce premature adult mortality in Mexico.