Heart Treatments May Aid Diabetics

Juvenile diabetes patients are getting some new advice: Don’t smoke, and watch your weight and blood pressure.

These heart disease risk factors were almost as important as blood-sugar levels in predicting which diabetics would develop nerve problems, a new study from Britain suggests.

In light of the findings, diabetes experts said cholesterol- lowering statin drugs and other heart disease treatments should be studied to see if they can help stave off or slow the progression of nerve damage in diabetics.

Of the 18 million Americans who have diabetes, about 5 percent to 10 percent have Type 1, sometimes called juvenile diabetes, though it can strike at any age. It occurs when the body cannot make enough insulin, the hormone needed to convert food into energy.

British researchers selected 1,172 Type 1 patients throughout Europe and monitored their smoking habits, body weight, blood pressure, and cholesterol and triglyceride levels over seven years. Nearly a quarter of them developed nerve damage during that time.

Scientists found an apparent connection between nerve damage and risk factors for heart disease. For example, patients who had high blood pressure were twice as likely to develop nerve problems.

The study, led by Dr. Solomon Tesfaye of the Sheffield Teaching Hospitals in England, appears in today’s New England Journal of Medicine.

“It emphasizes that you have to treat the whole patient,” said Dr. Martin Abrahamson, acting chief medical officer of the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston.