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Type 2 Diabetes Is Also Cardiovascular Disease

For people with type 2 diabetes, I learned that cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of diabetes-related death.I also learned from cardiovascular surgeon, Robert Chilton, that type 2 diabetes is already a cardiovascular disease with all the risk factors for heart attacks and heart disease. Moreover, the widely held glucose-centric approach to managing diabetes must broaden so that physicians and patients manage heart-health just as aggressively.

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Featured

 Clinical Update: Cardiovascular Disease in Diabetes Mellitus

Reducing atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) burden in diabetes mellitus is a major clinical imperative that should be prioritized to reduce premature death, improve quality of life, and lessen individual and economic burdens of associated morbidities, decreased work productivity, and high cost of medical care.

Articles of Interest

Diabetes and cardiovascular disease: A deadly duo

Coexisting diabetes and CVD make for a deadly duo. Not only is CVD the most common complication of diabetes but it’s also the leading cause of mortality from the disease, responsible for an estimated 80% of deaths.

Assessing Cardiovascular Risk Factors with Computer Vision

Using deep learning algorithms trained on data from 284,335 patients, we were able to predict CV risk factors from retinal images with surprisingly high accuracy for patients from two independent datasets of 12,026 and 999 patients.

Diabetes and cardiovascular disease: Epidemiology, biological mechanisms, treatment recommendations and future research

A close link exists between DM and cardiovascular disease (CVD), which is the most prevalent cause of morbidity and mortality in diabetic patients. Cardiovascular (CV) risk factors such as obesity, hypertension and dyslipidemia are common in patients with DM, placing them at increased risk for cardiac events.

Diabetes Is the Price Vietnam Pays for Progress

In a country where limbs were once shattered by ordnance and land mines, hospitals in Vietnam are treating an alarming caseload of “diabetes foot,” an infection that often begins as a minor scrape but then develops into a gangrenous wound because the disease desensitizes patients and compromises the healing process. In the most severe cases, legs are amputated. If the limb can be spared, doctors perform a debridement, a grisly operation that seems more fitting for the trenches of Verdun than for a dynamic, modern metropolis like Ho Chi Minh City.

Diabetes may be a major, overlooked reason Americans are now dying earlier

Diabetes’ prevalence has exploded in the US over the past 20 years. Nearly 30 million Americans live with the disease today — more than three times the number in the early 1990s. And researchers have long known that diabetes is an underreported cause of death on death certificates, the primary data source for determining life expectancy trends. That’s because people with diabetes often have multiple health conditions, or “comorbidities,” such as cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, obesity, and even cancer.

Heart in Diabetes: A Microvascular Disease

Although much of the excess risk of CAD among patients with diabetes is accounted for by the presence of diabetes-associated CVD risk factors such as LDL cholesterol, elevated blood pressure, and smoking, a substantial proportion remains unexplained. A deleterious effect of the diabetic state on vascular and endothelial function is likely to be important via its ability to increase the potential for vasoconstriction and thrombosis.

How Do People Die From Diabetes?

Heart disease strikes people with diabetes at significantly higher rates than people without diabetes, “and we don’t fully know why,” said Dr. Robert Gabbay, chief medical officer at Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston. People with diabetes develop heart disease at younger ages and are nearly twice as likely to die of heart attack or stroke as people who do not have diabetes.

Opinion: Getting to the heart of America's diabetes crisis

People living with diabetes are more than twice as likely to develop a heart problem and up to four times as likely to die from cardiovascular disease. Yet half of people living with diabetes aren't aware of this risk.

Unlocking the Diabetes-Heart-Disease Connection

For many years now, researchers have known that high blood sugar levels are somehow bad for the heart. A person with diabetes has a risk of dying of a heart attack or stroke two to four times as great as someone who has already survived a heart attack.

We Need A Moonshot For Diabetes Prevention, Part One: The Case For Action

Tony was diagnosed with diabetes in his 40s. He episodically managed his condition with better diet, exercise and medications. But life—demanding jobs, travel, dinners out and no time for exercise—got in the way. It all caught up with him. His diabetes worsened and led to other complications, including cardiovascular disease.

Why So Many of Us Die of Heart Disease

...even though our nutrition has changed a lot, adaptive mechanisms that were meant to protect us from starvation have now, in fact, led to the dual epidemics of obesity and diabetes, which are some of the main reasons why heart disease remains the number-one killer of people around the world.

Resources

Diabetes Heart Connection

There is significant room for improvement in the management of chronic conditions, but what we must not lose sight of is that greater awareness can motivate change - SAVED LIVES, increased prevention, earlier detection, better management & quality of life, saved health care dollars! There is a great deal of work still to be done.

My Heart Matters

The symptoms can be silent. But the impact can be life-changing. Learn more about the connection between type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

Diabetes and Vascular Disease Research

The first international peer-reviewed journal to unite diabetes and vascular disease in a single title. The journal publishes original papers, research letters and reviews. This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)

Diabetes.co.uk

Heart disease is a complication that may affect people with diabetes if their condition is not managed well for a prolonged period of time.. Coronary heart disease is recognized to be the cause of death for 80% of people with diabetes, however, the NHS states that heart attacks are largely preventable.