Scientists from Johns Hopkins found among older adults with early-stage—also known as preclinical—heart failure, uncontrolled diabetes can strongly increase the risk of heart failure progression.
They found that controlling diabetes early in the heart failure process has immense potential to significantly prevent the progression to a later stage, or overt, heart failure.
The research is published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology and was conducted by Justin Echouffo Tcheugui et al.
In the study, the team gathered its data from more than 4,700 participants and examined their clinical data.
All participants had preclinical heart failure, meaning they were either in stage A or stage B of heart failure.
Stage A is the existence of at least one clinical heart failure risk factor, such as hypertension or obesity, without structural heart disease.
Stage B is the presence of structural heart disease or elevated cardiac biomarkers without signs or symptoms of heart failure.
The team showed that uncontrolled diabetes was associated with the advancement of heart failure for participants in stages A and B of heart failure.
Participants with uncontrolled diabetes in stage A were 1.5 times more likely to progress to overt heart failure, while those in stage B were 1.8 times more likely.
Additionally, among participants in stage B, those with uncontrolled diabetes experienced overt heart failure at a younger age (80 years) than their counterparts with controlled diabetes (83 years) or no diabetes (82 years).
These results demonstrate the vulnerability of older adults with co-occurring diabetes and stage A or B heart failure.
The researchers believe that such people may greatly benefit from preventive therapies including lifestyle modification and medication.
There are three to four times more individuals with preclinical heart failure than with overt heart failure; many lives can be prolonged by addressing diabetes in those early stages.
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