WEDNESDAY, Jan. 30, 2019 — Midlife increases in fasting glucose (FG) with conversion to diabetes are associated with higher cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk, according to research published online Jan. 7 in Diabetes Care.

Michael P. Bancks, Ph.D., from the Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and colleagues analyzed pooled data from seven observational cohorts of 19,630 U.S. black and white men and women without a previous CVD event at baseline. Participants were followed from 1960 to 2015. The authors estimated the long-term absolute risk for CVD according to FG levels below the threshold of diabetes (FG ≥7 mmol/L).

The researchers found that the risk for CVD through 85 years of age ranged from 15.3 percent (FG <5 mmol/L) to 38.6 percent (diabetes levels) among women and from 21.5 percent to 47.7 percent, respectively, among men. There was a higher long-term CVD risk with an FG of 6.3 to 6.9 mmol/L compared with the lowest FG among men but not women. Higher cardiovascular risk (1.3-fold to 3.6-fold) was seen with increases in glucose during midlife with conversion to diabetes versus increases in glucose below the diabetes threshold.

“These data strongly support the importance of blood glucose monitoring in midlife for CVD prevention,” the authors write.

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Posted: January 2019

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