Diabetic women's heart-disease risk higher

SAN DIEGO, Jun 27, 2005 (United Press International via COMTEX) -- Women suffering from type 2 diabetes are at significantly higher risk of suffering a fatal heart attack than their healthy counterparts, Swedish researchers report.

"We have found a significant interaction between type 2 diabetes in women and increased risk of acute myocardial infarction, both in measures relative to men and in absolute measures," researcher Charlotte Larsson of Lund University in Malmo, Sweden, told United Press International. "We now need more sex-specific research, more research on sex-specific mechanisms of disease."

Larsson and colleagues presented their findings at the American Diabetes Association's 65th Annual Scientific Sessions.

Between 1992 and 1993 the team evaluated 1,085 subjects aged 40 to 84 years with hypertension and/or type 2 diabetes, following their annual primary-care check-ups. The team separated the subjects into two groups: those with type 2 diabetes and those with both type 2 diabetes and hypertension.

In 1993-1994 they used the same protocol to evaluate 1,071 subjects from the general population selected randomly from age groups corresponding to the 1992-1993 study group. The researchers excluded all subjects with hypertension and/or type 2 diabetes, leaving a control group of 804 healthy adults.

They then tracked both groups for fatal heart attacks and similar events until 2002, using national hospital in-patient and mortality registers. They found 52 fatal heart attacks among all the men and 29 among all the women.

When the results were analyzed further, the researchers found women in the group with type 2 diabetes had 3.1 times the risk of women in the healthy group, while the diabetic men had a risk 1.9 times higher than their healthy counterparts.

The researchers said their findings held when adjusted for differences in age, hypertension, smoking, total cholesterol, body mass index and leisure time physical activity.

"Diabetes and (cardiovascular disease) are tightly linked," Dr. Nathaniel G. Clark, national vice president for clinical affairs at the American Diabetes Association in Alexandria, Va., told UPI. "While men continue to be thought to be most at risk ... diabetes has a significant effect. This study, along with an increasing number of others, documents the importance of maximizing the quality of diabetes care and (heart disease) risk reduction for women as well."

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Bruce Sylvester covers medical research for UPI Science News. E-mail: sciencemail@upi.com