Importance: Asia is home to the largest diabetic populations in the world. However, limited studies have quantified the association of diabetes with all-cause and cause-specific mortality in Asian populations.

Objectives: To evaluate the association of diabetes with all-cause and cause-specific mortality in Asia and to investigate potential effect modifications of the diabetes-mortality associations by participants' age, sex, education level, body mass index, and smoking status.

Design, Setting, and Participants: This pooled analysis incorporated individual participant data from 22 prospective cohort studies of the Asia Cohort Consortium conducted between 1963 and 2006. A total of 1002551 Asian individuals (from mainland China, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, India, and Bangladesh) were followed up for more than 3 years. Cohort-specific hazard ratios and 95% confidence intervals for all-cause and cause-specific mortality were estimated using Cox regression models and then pooled using random-effects meta-analysis. Analysis was conducted between January 10, 2018, and August 31, 2018. Exposures: Doctor-diagnosed diabetes, age, sex, education level, body mass index, and smoking status.

Main Outcomes and Measures: All-cause and cause-specific mortality.

Results: Of 1002551 participants (518537 [51.7%] female; median [range] age, 54.0 [30.0-98.0] years), 148868 deaths were ascertained during a median (range) follow-up of 12.6 (3.0-38.9) years. The overall prevalence of diabetes reported at baseline was 4.8% for men and 3.6% for women. Patients with diabetes had a 1.89-fold risk of all-cause death compared with patients without diabetes (hazard ratio [HR], 1.89; 95% CI, 1.74-2.04), with the highest relative risk of death due to diabetes itself (HR, 22.8; 95% CI, 18.5-28.1), followed by renal disease (HR, 3.08; 95% CI, 2.50-3.78), coronary heart disease (HR, 2.57; 95% CI, 2.19-3.02), and ischemic stroke (HR, 2.15; 95% CI, 1.85-2.51). The adverse diabetes-mortality associations were more evident among women (HR, 2.09; 95% CI, 1.89-2.32) than among men (HR, 1.74; 95% CI, 1.62-1.88) (P for interaction <.001) and more evident among adults aged 30 to 49 years (HR, 2.43; 95% CI, 2.08-2.84) than among adults aged 70 years and older (HR, 1.51; 95% CI, 1.40-1.62) (P for interaction <.001). A similar pattern of association was found between diabetes and cause-specific mortality, with significant variations noted by sex and age.

Conclusions and Relevance: This study found that diabetes was associated with increased risk of death from several diseases among Asian populations. Development and implementation of diabetes management programs are urgently needed to reduce the burden of diabetes in Asia.