Gaps in life expectancy for people with type 1 diabetes.

Two papers in this issue of Diabetologia present recent trends in life expectancy for people with type 1 diabetes, one using data from an Australian registry (Huo et al, DOI: 10.1007/s00125-015-3857-4 ), the other, a Swedish registry (Petrie et al, DOI: 10.1007/s00125-016-3914-7 ). This commentary provides a brief review of the concept of the period life expectancy and complexities regarding applicability to patients, before summarising and discussing the main results of the two papers. In addition, some remaining relevant knowledge gaps are discussed.