Scientists from Beijing Tiantan Hospital found that arterial stiffness was a better predictor of future risk of Type 2 diabetes than blood pressure.
They found people with a combination of high blood pressure and stiffer arteries had the highest risk of developing diabetes.
The research is published in Hypertension and was conducted by Anxin Wang et al.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 37 million people in the U.S. in 2019 had diabetes, of which, approximately 90-95% of them had Type 2 diabetes.
Type 2 diabetes can lead to heart disease, kidney disease, stroke and premature death.
Previous studies have found that hypertension, or high blood pressure, is a risk factor for Type 2 diabetes.
Arterial stiffness, a common finding in people with high blood pressure, is also associated with insulin resistance and Type 2 diabetes.
In the study, the team examined health data from 11,156 participants aged 18 to 98 years in Tangshan, China.
The team found that compared to the people with ideal vascular function, participants with elevated arterial stiffness combined with high blood pressure had the highest risk of developing Type 2 diabetes.
People with normal blood pressure and stiffer arteries also had an increased risk of Type 2 diabetes as compared to the group with ideal vascular function.
Participants with high blood pressure and normal arterial stiffness had the lowest risk of Type 2 diabetes.
The team found that people with increased arterial stiffness were more likely to develop Type 2 diabetes, whether they had high blood pressure or not.
These results provide strong evidence that measuring arterial stiffness may be a better predictor than blood pressure in determining an individual’s future risk of Type 2 diabetes.
The analysis also found that the combination of high blood pressure and stiffer arteries was more likely in men, and among people who were older, had a higher BMI, and higher heart rate, and reported smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol.
People with increased arterial stiffness also had higher fasting blood glucose and cholesterol levels compared to participants who did not.
Additionally, the researchers found that adjusting the analysis to consider BMI did not change the association between arterial stiffness and Type 2 diabetes.
If you care about diabetes, please read studies about vegetables that could reduce kidney damage caused by diabetes, and many people with diabetes have kidney damage.
For more information about diabetes, please see recent studies about exercise that can help reduce type 2 diabetes risk, and results showing people with diabetes need to prevent low blood sugar.
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