Posted by North Ohio Heart Center and Ohio Medical Group on Wed, Dec 30, 2009
With November as National Diabetes Month, we wanted to highlight a study that shows that women with diabetes may be 26% more likely than other women to develop a heart rhythm problem called atrial fibrillation.
These findings were published in the October edition of Diabetes Care with data from more than 34,000 adults who got their health care through Kaiser Permanente Northwest. The group included 17,000 diabetes patients.
At the study’s start, it was known that atrial fibrillation was more common in diabetes patients than in people without diabetes, affecting 3.6% of the diabetes patients, compared to 2.5% of those without diabetes. The researchers then tracked all participants who didn't already have atrial fibrillation for seven years.
During that time, they saw that people with diabetes were more likely than people without diabetes to develop atrial fibrillation. That risk was higher for women than for men.
Regardless of factors including age, height, weight, blood pressure, previous history of heart disease, cholesterol levels, and hemoglobin A1c (which is used to estimate blood sugar control in recent months), women with diabetes were 26% more likely than other women to develop atrial fibrillation.
But diabetes didn't stand out as an independent risk factor for atrial fibrillation in men. That is, atrial fibrillation was more common in men with diabetes than in men without diabetes, but that gap vanished when the researchers controlled for other risk factors.
The reasons for the gender gap in the results aren't clear from this study.
"Diabetes has long been recognized as a risk factor for atrial fibrillation," write the researchers, who included Gregory Nichols, PhD, of the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research in Portland, Ore.
Still, Nichols and his colleagues say the gender gap in their findings was unexpected and needs further study.
About the author:
Practicing in Elyria, Dr. Navdeep Kaur's special interests include Preventive Medicine, Diabetes, Hypertension, Geriatric Medicine. If you don’t currently have a doctor, Ohio Medical Group’s new physician, Dr. Navdeep Kaur, is currently accepting new patients, and Diabetes and Hypertension are two of her specialties!
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Posted by North Ohio Heart Center and Ohio Medical Group on Mon, Dec 14, 2009
Since November was National Diabetes Month, we thought we’d highlight another way that diabetes can impact your heart health—hypertension. North Ohio Heart Center and Ohio Medical Group have physicians who specialize in diabetes and hypertension.
According to an article in the journal of the American Academy of Family Physicians
nearly one in four adults in the United States has hypertension, and more than 10 million adults have diabetes. Moreover, hypertension is twice as common in persons with diabetes as it is in others.
Obesity may be a common link between the two disorders, but other factors such as insulin resistance and autonomic dysfunction may also be involved. Excess weight with truncal obesity, hypertension, impaired glucose tolerance, insulin resistance, and dyslipidemia (a disruption in the amount of lipids in the blood) are among the components of the metabolic syndrome, which has been associated with an increased risk of coronary heart disease.
In general, only 25% of patients with hypertension have adequate control of their blood pressure, and this is even more important for those with diabetes. Elevated blood pressure is known to contribute to diabetic microvascular and macrovascular complications such as.
- Microvascular: kidney disease, sexual dysfunction and eye disease.
- Macrovascular: cardiac disease and risk of strokes.
Fortunately, reductions in blood pressure can decrease the risk of these complications.
Lifestyle modifications such as exercise and a diet low in salt and high in potassium have clearly been shown to decrease blood pressure and may also improve glycemic control and insulin sensitivity. Excessive sodium intake is particularly harmful in patients with diabetes because it may work against their medications.
Although the benefits of lifestyle modification are clear, few patients are able to achieve blood pressure control with these interventions alone. To reduce this risk, hypertension must be diagnosed accurately and promptly, and the patient must receive adequate treatment. So be sure to see a doctor.
About the author:
Practicing in Elyria, Dr. Navdeep Kaur's special interests include Preventive Medicine, Diabetes, Hypertension, Geriatric Medicine. If you don’t currently have a doctor, Ohio Medical Group’s new physician, Dr. Navdeep Kaur, is currently accepting new patients, and Diabetes and Hypertension are two of her specialties!
More Blogs from Dr. Kaur...
Dr. Kaur's BIO...