Impact of diabetes on arterial stiffness

Objectives/Background: The purpose of our study was to examine the impact of diabetes on arterial stiffness. A systematic review, published by Cecelja and Chowienczyk (1), describes that pulse wave velocity (PWV), is highly predictive of cardiovascular events, and PWV is associated with age and blood-pressure, but other pressure- independent risk factors including: dyslipidemia, smoking, diabetes, obesity remain inconsistent in many studies. Methods: We included 796 patients, 398 of whom had diabetes. Patients were separated according to age, and we used the normal values for PWV described by Boutouyrie et al (2) .We analyzed time of disease, diabetes control, and their impact on PWV. A Mobil- o -Graph device was used to analyze the PWV, and a Stata 9.0 software was used for the statistics analysis. Results: We found that diabetes is associated with an increase in PWV (OR: 1.6 p<0.01) and the diabetes control also had influence in the PWV increase, which means that an glycated hemoglobin above 7.0 % had an OR: 2.4, p< 0,001. When we analysed the time of diabetes diagnosis, the longer duration of disease (> 120 months) had thirty- eight times more risk to increase the PWV, and those that had been diagnosed between 61 to 119 months had approximately three times more risk to increase the PWV. Conclusions: In our study we found that diabetes had increased the pulse wave velocity. Diabetes control and duration of disease also had impact on arterial stiffness.