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Repeat heart failure risk greater for women with diabetes
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Women with diabetes are at greater risk for repeat heart failure and all-cause mortality related to the illness compared with those without diabetes, but this heightened risk does not hold for men with disease, according to findings published in Diabetic Medicine.
“Identifying and controlling prognostic factors are essential in heart failure management to improve outcomes,” Myung-A Kim, MD, PhD, a professor in the department of internal medicine at Seoul National University College of Medicine and Boramae Medical Center in Korea, and colleagues wrote. “Gender may be one of the prognostic factors for heart failure.”
Kim and colleagues studied records from 3,162 participants in the Korean Heart Failure registry who visited a hospital because of heart failure from June 2004 to April 2009. Researchers obtained patient demographics and medical status/history from the registry, which allowed them to identify 974 participants with diabetes (mean age, 68.7 years; 50.8% women) and 2,188 participants without the disease (mean age, 66.9 years; 50.2% women). Diabetes was confirmed by an HbA1c level of at least 6.5%, a fasting plasma glucose level of more than 7 mmol/l or a random plasma glucose level of more than 11.1 mmol/l, according to the researchers.
Participants were followed for a median 549 days, during which the researchers reported instances of either a return to the hospital due to heart failure or all-cause mortality, categorized as the composite events of the study. Nearly half of the participants with diabetes (48.2%) experienced one of these events, compared with 43.4% of those without diabetes (P = .013). A composite event was 21% more likely for participants with vs. without diabetes (HR = 1.21; 95% CI, 1.01-1.44) and 43% more likely for women with vs. without diabetes (HR = 1.43; 95% CI, 1.12-1.84). The risk was numerically higher, but not statistically significant, for men with vs. without diabetes.
“Our results provide additional evidence of the association of diabetes mellitus with prognosis worsening in females in ischemic heart disease, which is generalizable to people with heart failure,” the researchers wrote. “Customized approaches to individual prognostic factors are very important for avoiding poor prognosis of the heart failure. More careful and strict management strategies should be emphasized, especially in females with diabetes and heart failure.” – by Phil Neuffer
Disclosures: The authors report no relevant financial disclosures.
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