Heart Disease Drops Among Diabetics

Although diabetes remains a significant risk factor for cardiac problems, there has been about a 50 percent decline in the incidence of heart disease among adult diabetics over the past several decades, according to a new study.

A team led by Dr. Caroline Fox of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute found that between 1950 and 1966, adults with diabetes were about 50 percent more likely to develop heart disease than was the case in an 18-year period that began in 1977.

“The results of our study differ from those previously published, which have suggested that adults with diabetes have experienced less declines in cardiovascular disease risk than those without diabetes,” the researchers reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Fox’s team turned to data from one of the nation’s oldest and longest-running examinations of heart disease, the institute’s Framingham Heart Study and the follow-up tracking done on offspring of the original study group.

The researchers looked at the records for 4,118 participants in the 1950s and ’60s, including 113 with diabetes, and 4,063 patients from 1977 through 1995, of whom 317 had diabetes.

Among the diabetics in the earlier period, the heart-disease incidence was 286.4 per 10,000 person-years (people multiplied by the number of years in the study). The rate for the more recent period was 146.9 per 10,000.

The study also showed that among adults without diabetes there was a similar but smaller decline (35 percent) in heart-disease rates between the two periods.

However, researchers stress that the absolute risk of heart disease among diabetics remains twice greater than among those without the insulin disorder.