(Press-News.org) Men, Black Americans, those living in areas with low socioeconomic status more affected
The Illinois data from a diverse population (ethnic/racial, rural/metropolitan) likely reflects national amputation trends
‘Unless we make changes in how we care for marginalized communities, I don’t anticipate this getting better’
CHICAGO --- Rates of leg and foot amputations in Illinois hospitals increased 65% between 2016 and 2023, reports a new Northwestern Medicine study.
Men, Black patients, and those living in areas with low socioeconomic status were disproportionally affected, the study found. The dramatic spike is largely attributed to a growing prevalence of diabetes and peripheral artery disease (PAD), two chronic conditions that often lead to lower extremity amputation, the study authors said.
“Unfortunately, by the time a patient with diabetes and/or PAD presents with a foot wound or ascending leg infection, their disease might be just too advanced and amputation may be the only treatment option,” said first author Dr. Maggie Reilly, a vascular surgery resident at McGaw Medical Center of Northwestern University. “The patient population with both diabetes and PAD had the biggest increase in amputation rates.”
Rates of smoking have gone down in recent decades, and improvements in medical therapies, such as greater utilization of statin therapy, should theoretically improve limb salvage, she said. Those positive changes, however, are outpaced by the quickly increasing rates of diabetes and PAD, Reilly said.
“Despite our medical advances, we’re not reaching all the communities that need it,” Reilly said. “It’s creating this bigger divide between people who are getting the necessary preventive care and those who aren’t. Unless we make changes in how we care for marginalized communities, I don’t anticipate this getting better.”
The study was published today (Oct. 30) in the journal Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice.
Amputation burden: Shame, blame, months of healing
“The things that make a leg amputation necessary (diabetes and PAD) can also make it harder to heal,” Reilly said. “The effects of those diseases don’t stop with the amputation, which is really unfortunate.”
Patients undergo at least three months of post-operative care that includes medical appointments to ensure proper healing, followed by months of physical and occupational therapy to learn how to walk on a prosthetic leg. Some patients need to wait six months before getting their prosthesis, Reilly said.
“Going six months without walking can really make patients debilitated,” Reilly said. “It takes a big medical team to make sure patients get back to a level of independent functioning.”
The mental burden of losing a limb also weighs on patients.
“People feel shame or they’re looking for someone to blame. They can feel really disenchanted with the medical system and failed by their providers, but sometimes given the progressive nature of the disease, we’ve done everything we can do,” Reilly said. “Patients generally have a poor understanding of diabetes and PAD, which makes it hard for them to come to terms with this life-changing procedure.”
Illinois data likely reflects national rates of amputations
Approximately 150,000 non-traumatic leg amputations occur annually in the U.S. Although this study focused only on Illinois patients, the study authors said dramatic increases in leg and foot amputations are likely happening nationally.
“Using Illinois as a proxy for understanding amputation rates in the U.S. is helpful because Illinois has both metropolitan and rural areas, so it’s a good snapshot of different communities,” Reilly said. “We have a lot of racial and ethnic diversity, especially within Chicago, so we thought our data could be generalized nationwide.”
What can be done?
Some data suggest that 50% of patients who undergo an above-knee amputation will die in the next 12 months because of the nature of systemic disease, Reilly said — which is why prevention and appropriate management of cardiovascular disease is of dire importance.
“We know from previous studies that PAD is underrecognized, underdiagnosed, and undertreated, especially for patients from marginalized populations,” Reilly said. “Health systems and community partners should emphasize aggressive prevention including screening, early diagnosis and intensive risk factor management.”
Breaking down the study findings
Between 2016 and 2023, there were 30,834 amputation admissions from 193 Illinois hospitals, with a 65% increase in annual amputation rate. Rates of diabetes and hospital stays that extended past 20 days also increased significantly. Amputees were disproportionately men, with only 28.8% of patients being women. The cohort included 20.2% of patients who were 75 years or older, and 25% of patients were non-Hispanic Black (as compared to an Illinois population with only 13.9% Black residents in 2020). During the study period, 81.5% of amputations occurred in patients with diabetes. The largest percent increases in amputation rates were for males (+76.1%), non-Hispanic Black patients (+67.5%) and residents aged 65 to 74 years old.
The study is titled, “A population health analysis of trends in lower extremity amputation secondary to diabetes and peripheral artery disease, 2016-2023.” Other Northwestern study authors include Isabel Cohen, Samantha Watson, Dr. Karen Ho and Joe Feinglass.
END
TAMPA, Fla. (Oct. 30, 2025) — Two companion studies published in Cancer Research from scientists at Moffitt Cancer Center identify distinct but complementary approaches to overcoming drug resistance in KRAS G12C–mutant non-small cell lung cancer.
RAS genes produce proteins that act like on/off switches for cell growth. In healthy cells, this helps regulate normal tissue function. But when RAS is mutated, especially in cancers like non-small cell lung cancer, it can become stuck in the ...
A safer America will require bold investment in discovering, implementing, and scaling solutions that reduce firearm harms—especially those that center the people and communities most affected. That was the clear message from the JAMA Summit on Firearm Violence, which convened 60 leaders from across the nation to chart a roadmap toward reducing firearm violence, injuries, and deaths in the United States to record lows by 2040. The full report findings of the 2025 Summit are published in JAMA this month.
Over two days, experts from public health, medicine, law, economics, and industry participated in sessions focused on:
Achieving the safest ...
Global environmental DNA (eDNA) surveys significantly expand known geographic and ecological niche ranges of marine fish, highlighting current biases in conservation and ecological modeling
In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available paper in PLOS Biology: https://plos.io/42mNz7A
Article title: eDNA surveys substantially expand known geographic and ecological niche boundaries of marine fishes
Author countries: France, Switzerland, Tanzania, Indonesia
Funding: see manuscript END ...
A new study has identified over 240 scientific publications on animal models of hemorrhagic stroke that contain potentially problematic images, thereby raising concerns about the trustworthiness of the body of literature this field. The findings come from a team led by René Aquarius and Kim Wever at Radboud university medical center in the Netherlands, and are published October 30th in the open-access journal PLOS Biology.
Researchers often use images in their publications to provide evidence of whether a treatment works, for example, by showing the ...
Cheng Lyu is the winner of the 2025 Eppendorf & Science Prize for Neurobiology for her work in understanding how neural circuits assemble with such remarkable precision during development. Neural circuit assembly is a daunting challenge: young neurons must form specific connections with their correct synaptic partner among billions of others. How does the developing brain achieve such exquisite precision? What happens when it fails? To explore this unknown, Cheng Lyu and her research team turned to the fruit fly Drosophila, ...
A massive March 2025 earthquake in Myanmar tore through nearly 500 kilometers of the Sagaing Fault at extremely high speeds. In a new study – part of a package of four research articles on seismic activity in Myanmar – researchers show that an unusually thick, low-velocity fault zone acted like a high-speed corridor, driving one of the fastest and longest continental ruptures ever recorded. The largest earthquakes that occur within continental crusts can rupture faults extending for hundreds of kilometers and pose significant seismic threats. Many of these powerful events evolve into supershear ruptures – earthquakes in which the rupture front ...
Newly decoded brain circuits make memories more stable as part of learning, according to a new study led by NYU Langone Health researchers.
Published online in Science on Oct. 30, the study shows that activity in signaling pathways connecting two brain regions, the entorhinal cortex and the CA3 region of the hippocampus, help mice encode in brain circuitry maps of places.
The entorhinal/hippocampal circuit is known from past studies to be crucial for both memory formation, and the recalling of memories by completing patterns from partial cues. Reliable recall requires that hippocampal place maps remain stable, withstanding to some degree changes in the environment.
Problems ...
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) – most often found in athletes playing contact sports – is known to share similarities with Alzheimer’s disease (AD), namely the buildup of a protein called tau in the brain. New research published today in Science finds even more commonalities between the two at the genetic level, showing CTE (like AD) is linked to damage to the genome and not just caused by repeated head impact (RHI).
The research team, a collaboration between Boston Children’s Hospital, Mass General Brigham, and Boston University, used single-cell genomic sequencing to identify somatic genetic mutations (changes in DNA that ...
Chimpanzees may have more in common with human thinkers than previously thought. A new study published in Science by researchers provides evidence that chimpanzees can rationally revise their beliefs when presented with new information.
The study, titled “Chimpanzees rationally revise their beliefs,” was conducted by a large research team that included UC Berkeley Psychology Postdoctoral Researcher Emily Sanford, UC Berkeley Psychology Professor Jan Engelmann and Utrecht University Psychology Professor Hanna Schleihauf. Their findings showed that chimpanzees — like humans ...
PITTSBURGH, Oct. 30, 2025 – An international team led by a University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine scientist has created a first-of-its-kind resource to identify those with a genetic risk for elevated ‘bad’ cholesterol -- a major contributor to heart disease.
Published today in Science, this resource can assist clinicians in predicting patient risk for heart attacks and strokes, allowing time for prevention and early treatment.
Heart disease remains the leading cause of death in the United States, claiming nearly 700,000 ...
