Type 2 diabetes greatly increases a person's risk of developing cardiovascular disease (CVD). A new study showing that cardiovascular risk factors such as elevated blood pressure and cholesterol levels differ significantly between men and women is published in Diabetes Technology & Therapeutics (DTT), a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the DTT website at http://www.liebertpub.com/dtt.
Joni Strom Williams, MD, MPH and coauthors from Medical University of South Carolina and Ralph H. Johnson VA Medical Center (Charleston, SC), compared three individual CVD risk factors and a "composite control" factor (comprised of all three risk factors together) among a group of men and women with type 2 diabetes. In the article "Gender Differences in Composite Control of Cardiovascular Risk Factors Among Patients with Type 2 Diabetes" the authors report significant disparities for blood pressure, low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, and composite control, but not for control of glycosylated hemoglobin A1c.
"Cardiovascular disease continues to be a significant factor for increased morbidity and mortality in people with type 2 diabetes," says DTT Editor-in-Chief Satish Garg, MD, Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics at the University of Colorado Denver. "Every attempt should be made to reduce gender differences as they relate to co-morbidities."
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