ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Obesity is associated with insulin resistance, development of diabetes, and coronary heart disease. There is limited information on the contribution of previous obesity on the risk of coronary heart disease. We aimed to examine the effect of previous history of obesity on the occurrence of coronary heart disease in patients with diabetes. METHODS: We carried out a retrospective chart analysis of 315 type 2 diabetic patients without obesity and without atherosclerotic cardiovascular events at their initial hospital visit (men/women 236/79; mean ± standard deviation; age 53.1 ± 6.6 years; maximal body mass index before enrollment (MAXBMI) 26.6 ± 3.4 kg/m2; decrease of the BMI at enrollment from MAXBMI (deltaBMI) 4.23 ± 2.62 kg/m2) to investigate the association of previous obesity (MAXBMI larger than 30 kg/m2) with the long-term incidence of cardiovascular events. Of 315 patients, forty-eight were previously obese. RESULTS: After median follow-up of 13.9 years, 48 patients developed coronary heart disease. The Kaplan-Meier analysis exhibited that coronary heart disease occurred more frequently in previously obese patients than in subjects in the reference category (22 kg/m2 < or = MAXBMI < 25 kg/m2) and that the effect lasted proportionally over follow-up periods. Multivariate Cox regression models showed that hazard ratios and corresponding 95% confidence intervals of coronary heart disease for patients with previous obesity compared with subjects in the reference category were 2.52 and 1.15 to 5.50 (p value = 0.020) after adjustment for age, sex, smoking status, systolic blood pressure, total cholesterol and HDL cholesterol. In this cohort, deltaBMI strongly correlated with MAXBMI and also behaved as a risk factor. The hazard ratios and 95% confidence intervals by the increment of one standard deviation of deltaBMI after adjustment for age, sex, smoking status, systolic blood pressure, total cholesterol and HDL cholesterol were 1.38 and 1.08 to 1.79 (p value = 0.013). CONCLUSIONS: Previous obesity and/or large body weight loss before admission might act as an increased risk for coronary heart disease.
ABSTRACT
AIM: To analyze the risk of coronary heart disease in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) receiving standard medical treatment. METHODS: We performed a retrospective chart analysis of 269 middle-aged patients (age 45-64 years, mean age, 53.9 ± 5.5 years) with T2DM and without atherosclerotic cardiovascular events who underwent typing to determine their apolipoprotein E (apoE) isoforms. The apoE isoforms were determined using isoelectric focusing, followed by immunoblotting. We retrospectively evaluated the charts of the 269 patients, recorded between their first visit to the hospital (the study's start point, between 1987 and 1992) and the occurrence of an atherosclerotic cardiovascular event (the study's endpoint) or January 2004, whichever came first. The age-adjusted mean values and the prevalences of covariates were calculated to compare the laboratory data among the apoE phenotypes. To investigate the association of risk factors with the incidence of coronary heart disease during the follow-up period, monovariate and multivariate Cox regression models were used. RESULTS: At enrollment, the mean serum low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol levels were lowest (2.92 ± 0.89 mmol/L) among the subjects with apoE2 (apoE2/2 or apoE2/3) and highest (3.52 ± 0.77 mmol/L) among the subjects with apoE4 (apoE3/4 or apoE4/4). No significant differences in mean age or the percentage of smokers were observed among the three groups. Furthermore, no significant differences were observed in the systolic and diastolic blood pressures, body mass index, HbA1c level or serum triglyceride levels among the three groups. There were 47 cases of coronary heart disease over 3285 person-years of follow-up. An age-adjusted multivariate Cox proportional model identified diabetic retinopathy (hazard ratio, 2.38, 95% CI: 1.28-4.43, P = 0.006), a high systolic blood pressure (hazard ratio, 1.04, 95% CI: 1.02-1.06, P < 0.001) and high HbA1c values (hazard ratio, 1.19, 95% CI: 1.02-1.38, P = 0.0029), but not the LDL cholesterol value at enrollment (hazard ratio, 1.01, 95% CI: 0.97-1.05, P = 0.77) nor the specific apoE isoform, as significant predictors of coronary heart disease. CONCLUSION: Under standard medical treatment of diabetes, including the control of LDL cholesterol levels, the apoE4 isoform was not associated with coronary heart disease among T2DM patients.
