EDITOR, - William F Kelly and colleagues link social deprivation and illness in diabetic patients.1 It would have been informative to know whether the patients living in the deprived wards were not using insulin simply because they had non-insulin dependent diabetes, which would be in agreement with their older age. Was the prevalence of insulin dependent diabetes comparable in the wards? In an earlier Danish study that linked diabetic ketoacidosis to social deprivation, patients from the lowest social classes had …