‘The Shining’ actress Shelley Duvall died of complications of diabetes. What does that mean?

Actress Shelley Duvall died on Thursday, at age 75, from complications of diabetes . The disease had Duvall, best known for her roles in The Shining, Popeye, and a series of 1970s Robert Altman films, in hospice and bedridden for months in her home of Blanco, Texas, according to her longtime partner Dan Gilroy. Diabetes is actually the eighth leading cause of death in the United States, according to the American Diabetes Association , killing 100,000 people in both 2021 and 2022.

It is the most common underlying condition of disease in the U.S., according to report in the journal BMJ , and some 40% of people who died of COVID-19 had diabetes.

Other celebrities living with diabetes include Tom Hanks, Nick Jonas, Randy Jackson, Halle Berry, and Sherri Shepherd. Actress and producer Penny Marshall died of complications from the disease in 2018 at age 75, as did country singer Waylon Jennings, musician Curtis Mayfield, actor Carroll O’Connor and jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald. But what does it mean to die of diabetes complications? And how common is it? What is diabetes? More than 38.

4 million Americans—11.3% of the population—have diabetes, including 8.3 million who have not had it diagnosed but meet the lab criteria, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

It’s a condition caused by a person’s blood glucose, or blood sugar—a body’s main source of energy—being too high, according to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidn.