Diabetes Doubles the Risk of Heart Disease

Diabetes doubles the risk of developing serious blood vessel diseases and life threatening events such as strokes and heart attacks, a new study show.

The findings emphasize the need to increase efforts to prevent diabetes, researchers report in a study published in The Lancet.

The results of the study are also being presented at the American Diabetes Association's 70th annual scientific sessions in Orlando, Fla.

British scientists analyzed data on nearly 700,000 people, each of whom had been monitored for about 10 years in 102 surveys in 25 countries.

One suprising finding: Only a small part of the effects of diabetes on heart disease and stroke can be explained by blood fats, blood pressure, and obesity.

Other findings include:

Blood glucose levels alone should not be used to help indentify people at increased risk of heart disease or stroke.

Diabetes may cause damage through additional routes than obesity, blood fats, and blood pressure.

Higher than average fasting blood glucose levels are only weakly related to later development of hear attacks or storkes.

"Our findings highlight the need for better prevetion of diabetes coupled with greater investigation of the mechanisms by which diabetes increases the risk of cardiovascular disease," Nadeem Sarwar, PhD, of the University of Cambridge, says in a news release.

"Information on age, sex, smoking habits, blood pressue and blood fats is routinely collected to assess risk of developing cardiovascular disease. Our findings indicate that adding information on fasting blood glucose levels in people without diabetes does not provide significant extra help in assessing cardiovascular risk."

The study also shows that:

Cardiovascular disease is responsible for some 17 million deaths annually, worldwide

Coronary heart disease risks were higher in women than in men 40-49 than at age 70 and older.

The researchers write that the findings were consistent across all groups of people in the 25 countries for which data was analyzed.