Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: It is well known that diabetes confers a substantial burden of macrovascular disease. However, just a few studies have investigated the association between diabetic kidney disease (DKD) and cardiovascular disease. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the presence of DKD is associated with macrovascular disease in diabetic patients.

Patients and methods: 98 diabetic patients (48 males/50 females) were included in the study. DKD was confirmed by the presence of moderately or severely increased albuminuria. Adverse cardiovascular events were collected, including: cardiac events, left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH), peripheral vascular disease (PVD), and stroke.

Statistical analysis: χ² test was used to compare the existence of macrovascular complications between groups with and without DKD.

Results: 68 patients with type 2 diabetes and 20 with type 1, with mean age (52.58±20.70) and mean HbA1c (11.21±2.33%), were included in the study. DKD was diagnosed in 24 patients: 16 with moderately increased albuminuria and eight with severely increased. DKD was significantly correlated with the existence of, at least, one macrovascular complication (P<0.02). Significant differences between the groups with or without DKD were found in the rate of: cardiac events (32.00 and 9.84%, respectively; P=0.01); LVH (36.00 and 1.59%, respectively; P<0.001), and PVD (20.00 and 13.33%, respectively; P=0.04). These differences remained significant after adjusting for age, sex, hypertension, smoking habit, HbA1c, duration of diabetes, and BMI. No significant differences in the rate of strokes.

Conclusions: Our results show significant correlation between DKD and the existence of one or more macrovascular complications. Moreover, we have found that diabetic patients with DKD present significant higher rates of cardiac events, LVH and PVD than diabetic patients without DKD. Despite the limitations of the study, our results suggest that early detection of DKD might be a valuable component of macrovascular risk assessment in diabetic patients.