TUESDAY, Jan. 6, 2015 (HealthDay News) -- People with type 1 diabetes today lose more than a decade of life to the chronic disease, despite improved treatment of both diabetes and its complications, a new Scottish study reports.

Men with type 1 diabetes lose about 11 years of life expectancy compared to men without the disease. And, women with type 1 diabetes have their lives cut short by about 13 years, according to a report published in the Jan. 6 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The findings "provide a more up-to-date quantification of how much type 1 diabetes cuts your life span now, in our contemporary era," said senior author Dr. Helen Colhoun, a clinical professor in the diabetes epidemiology unit of the University of Dundee School of Medicine in Scotland.

Diabetes' impact on heart health appeared to be the largest single cause of lost years, according to the study. But, the researchers also found that type 1 diabetics younger than 50 are dying in large numbers from conditions caused by issues in management of the disease -- diabetic coma caused by critically low blood sugar, and ketoacidosis caused by a lack of insulin in the body.

"These conditions really reflect the day-to-day challenge that people with type 1 diabetes continue to face, how to get the right amount of insulin delivered at the right time to deal with your blood sugar levels," Colhoun said.

A second study, also in JAMA, suggested that some of these early deaths might be avoided with intensive blood sugar management.

In that paper, researchers reduced patients' overall risk of premature death by about a third, compared with diabetics receiving standard care, by conducting multiple blood glucose tests throughout the day and constantly adjusting insulin levels to hit very specific blood sugar levels.

"Across the board, individuals who had better glucose control due to intensive therapy had increased survival," said co-author Dr. Samuel Dagogo-Jack, chief of the division of endocrinology, diabetes and metabolism at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis.