Diabetic at 40 equals CVS at 55?

The July 2006 issue of Lancet, carried an article entitled "Relation between age and cardiovascular disease in men and women with diabetes compared with nondiabetic people: a population-based retrospective cohort study". This is an interesting study as it is mainly epidermiological. Dr Gillian Booth and colleagues studied the whole population of Toronto. There were 379,000 diabetics, and 9 million non-diabetic, and they were followed for 6 years from 1994-2000. They found that diabetics at 40years had the cardiovascular risk of a non-diabetic of 55 years. This is very interesting. If it as if we can see the future, for those 40 year old diabetics. Obviously, the implications must be that if we give 40 year old diabetics cardiovascular preventive medication like aspirin, ACE-I and statins, can we delay or avoid the cardiovascular complications? We have always knew that diabetes is actually a CVS risk equivalent, and now Dr Booth has given us a statistical number to work on. This is certainly interesting. Obviously much more work need to be done, but it is ceratinly exciting.