Health promotion and disease prevention can substantially reduce the total economic burden of diabetes in the Netherlands.

In this issue of the Netherlands Journal of Medicine, Peters et al. present a literature review which aimed to determine the current total economic burden of diabetes and its complications in the Netherlands.4 They found that the total costs of diabetes were quite similar to those previously reported in the UK by Hex et al.5 Peters et al. further came to the conclusion that diabetes and especially its complications pose a substantial burden on the Netherlands and predicted that this burden will increase further in the near future due to changing demographics and lifestyle. They suggested that a further rise in costs is unavoidable and cannot be halted in the near future. [...]