Heart Attack Increases Risk of Type 2 Diabetes

Filed in archive Research on September 10, 2007

Heart disease and type 2 diabetes have always been linked to each other. Actually the key word that would start the connection would be obesity and then heart disease followed by diabetes. The first one increases the risk for the next and so on. That is like a straight ladder to type 2 diabetes.




Now the reverse may actually be true: those who have had heart attacks are at a higher risk of developing both type 2 diabetes and the pre-diabetes or impaired fasting glucose (IFG) condition.

The researchers found one third of patients with a recent heart attack developed diabetes or IFG (blood glucose 6.1 mmol/L or more), during the 3.5 years of follow up; this rose to two-thirds when the lower IFG cut-off point of 5.6mmol/L or more blood glucose was used.

Patients with a recent heart attack were up to four-and-a-half times more likely to develop diabetes (3.7%) compared with the general population (0.8-1.6%), and more than 15 times more likely to develop IFG (27.5% versus 1.5%).

Risk factors identified for the condition are older age, high blood pressure, use of beta-blockers, lipid-lowering medications (protective), and diuretic use together with lifestyle (higher BMI, current smoking, lower Mediterranean dietary score, and wine consumption of more than one litre per day)

These new findings have been reported in The Lancet.

But if we really think about it, again these all boils down to our diet and lifestyle.

Source: Science Daily