Mortality and associated risk factors in diabetics

Abstract

Summary. In 168 male diabetics aged 40-64 years participating in the Whitehall Study, ten-year age adjusted mortality rates were significantly higher than in non-diabetics for all causes, coronary heart disease, all cardiovascular disease and, in addition, causes other than cardiovascular. Mortality rates were not significantly related to known duration of the diabetes. The predictive effects of several major mortality risk factors were similar in diabetics and non-diabetics. Excess mortality rates in the diabetics could not be attributed to differences in levels of blood pressure or any other of the major risk factors measured. Key words: diabetics; mortality rates; risk factors; coronary heart disease. There are many studies documenting higher mortality rates - particularly from cardiovascular disease -in diabetics compared with age and sex matched diabetics from the same population (see Jarrett et al. (1982) for review). However, there is sparse information relating potential risk factors to subsequent mortality within a diabetic population, information which might help to explain the increased mortality risk and also suggest preventive therapeutic approaches. In the Whitehall Study, a number of established diabetics participated in the screening programme and data on mortality rates up to ten years after screening are available. We present here a comparison of diabetics and non-diabetics in terms of relative mortality rates and the influence of conventional risk factors as well as an analysis of the relationship between duration of diabetes and mortality risk.