This is a news release from LDS Hospital.
"Diabetes is a known risk factor for mortality in patients with heart disease. Now a major new study by cardiac researchers at LDS Hospital has found heart disease patients who are not diabetic, but who have moderately elevated blood glucose levels, are also at significantly higher risk for death.
The study of more than 1,500 heart disease patients is one of the first to link increased mortality risk in cardiac patients whose blood glucose levels are below the 126 milligrams per deciliter threshold presently used to diagnose diabetes mellitus.
'One of the objectives of the study was to evaluate the severity and prevalence of more modest glucose metabolism abnormalities in non-diabetic patients with coronary artery disease,' says Kirti Salunkhe, M.D., a cardiac researcher at LDS Hospital and principal investigator of the study. 'Our data showed that moderate elevations of glucose is not only common among these patients, but that it is associated with a much higher mortality rate than patients whose glucose levels are completely normal.'
About the Study
Researchers studied 1,575 heart disease patients who underwent cardiac intervention procedures at LDS Hospital during a six year period. Patients were then grouped into four categories:
- those previously diagnosed with diabetes
- those not clinically diagnosed with diabetes, but with high glucose blood levels (over 126 mg/dsl)
- those with moderate glucose blood levels (between 110 and 126 mg/dsl)
- those with low glucose blood levels (below 110 mg/dsl)
After a nearly three year clinical follow up, researchers found an 11 percent mortality rate for both previously diagnosed diabetic heart disease patients and undiagnosed patients with glucose levels over 126 mg/dsl. Patients with moderate levels of glucose (110-126 mg/dsl) had an 8.5% percent mortality rate compared to a 1.7 percent mortality rate for patients whose glucose levels were normal, or below 110 mg/dsl.
'The prevalence of patients with heart disease who have moderate to high levels of glucose appears to be significant,' said Dr. Salunkhe. 'Some 60 percent of patients in our study showed evidence of glucose metabolism abnormalities that resulted in increased mortality risk. Whether non-diabetic heart patients with milder abnormalities of glucose metabolism might benefit from anti-diabetic therapy remains to be seen.'
'The next step of this investigation will likely be to look at insulin levels in these heart patients with mild fasting glucose elevations in an attempt to further understand and stratify the cardiovascular risk found in these patients,' said Dr. J. Brent Muhlestein, Director of Cardiology Research at LDS Hospital and an investigator in the study."
