Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: High blood pressure and type 2 diabetes are two pathologies that are often closely linked. The objective of our work is to determine the prevalence of hypertension and its effects on degenerative complications in a type 2 diabetic population.

Methods: This is a retrospective study including 147 patients, followed at the Tunis National Institute of Nutrition for type 2 diabetes and comorbidities.

Results: The mean age of the patients was 57.52±11.96 years with 66.7% women (n=98). The duration of diabetes was 11.42±8.58 years. Average fasting glucose was 13.76±5.15 mmol/l. Half had retinopathy (52.1%), one-third had neuropathy (33.3%) and 28.3% had diabetic nephropathy. Coronary insufficiency, peripheral artery occlusive disease (PAD) and stroke were found in 15.5%, 6.9%, and 4.8% of cases, respectively. High blood pressure was noted in 60.5% of patients. Its presence was positively correlated with age (P<0.001) and the duration of diabetes (P<0.001). The average fasting glucose was higher in hypertensive patients, but not significantly so (P=0.89). Retinopathy and neuropathy were more noted in the presence of hypertension (P=0.2 and P=0.12 respectively). The latter was significantly associated with diabetic nephropathy (P=0.02). It was also more frequent in the presence of coronary insufficiency (P=0.002). Hypertensive diabetics were also at greater risk of developing stroke or PAD (P=0.2 and P=0.7 respectively).

Conclusion: Hypertension was common and significantly associated with diabetic nephropathy and coronary insufficiency in our sample, hence the need for its early detection.