Association of differing dietary, metabolic, and clinical risk factors with macrovascular complications of diabetes: a prevalence study of 503 Mexican type II diabetic subjects. I.

Macrovascular and microvascular complications of diabetes may be associated with different environmental factors. To investigate this further, a prevalence study of 503 Mexican type II diabetic subjects was carried out while their patterns of nutrition were constrained by government food subsidies. Average daily dietary intakes were 1866 kcal; 46.5% as carbohydrate, 13.7 mmol cholesterol, 8.7 g fiber, and a polyunsaturated/saturated fat ratio of 0.98. With respect to macrovascular disease, 49.3% of patients had evidence of peripheral vascular disease, and 21.6% myocardial ischemia, 6.0% angina, 10.8% EKG evidence of ischemia, 4.8% EKG evidence of myocardial infarction. Only 1.2% (six patients) had a clear history of completed stroke, and all were hypertensive. Six patients had also undergone amputations for diabetic gangrene. Tabulation of the means of clinical characteristics according to presence or absence of myocardial ischemia showed that higher cholesterol, calorie, and fat intake, higher mean blood pressure, higher serum cholesterol, and serum triglyceride levels were found in those with myocardial ischemia. Patients with peripheral vascular disease were more commonly smokers. Stepwise logistic regression revealed significant positive associations between myocardial ischemia and dietary cholesterol, serum cholesterol, and mean blood pressure. In contrast, the presence of peripheral vascular disease was significantly related only to smoking and retinopathy. There were no associations between macrovascular complications and duration of diabetes in the multivariate analysis, and they occurred with equal frequency in men and women. Prospective studies of atherosclerosis in maturity-onset diabetes should assess and seek to modify dietary cholesterol, serum cholesterol, and hypertension.

Association of differing dietary, metabolic, and clinical risk factors with microvascular complications of diabetes: a prevalence study of 503 Mexican type II diabetic subjects. II.

The overall prevalences of microvascular complications and their association with dietary, clinical, and metabolic characteristics have been studied in 503 Mexican type II diabetic subjects. Average daily dietary intakes were 1866 kcal, 46.5% as carbohydrate, 13.7 mmol cholesterol, 8.7 g fiber, and a polyunsaturated/saturated fat ratio of 0.98. Prevalence rates of microvascular and metabolic complications were as follows: background retinopathy 12.3%, exudative retinopathy 24.2%, proliferative retinopathy 8.1% (1% blind, 4% able to read large print only), 9.1% of patients had cataract, 15.9% nephropathy, and 40.8% peripheral neuropathy. In addition, 3.6% had experienced transient lower motor neuron facial paralysis and 0.2% oculomotor paralysis. Patients with retinopathy had a longer mean duration of diabetes, were less obese at the time of examination, and had higher initial and mean blood pressures and higher mean fasting blood glucose levels when compared with those without retinopathy. Similar differences were observed between groups with and without nephropathy except that mean blood glucose levels were similar in the two groups. The presence of peripheral neuropathy was associated with longer duration of diabetes, less obesity, higher mean blood pressure and mean blood glucose levels, and lower hemoglobin concentration. Patients treated with diet alone had significantly lower prevalences of all three microvascular complications but they also had significantly shorter duration of diabetes and lower mean blood glucose levels. However, multivariate analyses on the subgroup of 360 patients who had repeated fasting blood glucose measurements for at least 5 yr demonstrated associations between retinopathy and duration of diabetes, mean blood pressure and mean blood glucose, and percent calories from carbohydrate.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)