Diabetes and heart disease risks

Patients suffering from diabetes face the same risk of cardiovascular disease as a person who is a whole 15 years older, according to a new study carried out in Canada .
The Canadian study, published in the leading British medical journal The Lancet, also assessed the age at which diabetics move from a moderate to a high risk . The finding, which has implications for the treatment of diabetes and cardiovascular disease, shows the age to be 41 for men and 48 for women .
The data was compiled by the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences, and was gleaned from an ongoing study that ran from April 1994 to March 2000. Ontario adults aged 20 or over were investigated regarding diabetes and its complications.
The lead author of the study, Dr. Gillian Booth, reportedly said: “we found that on average that people who are 40 with diabetes have the same level of risk as someone without diabetes who is 55, and that was the same virtually for men and women. Women tend to have heart disease at an older age, and we found that both in the diabetic and non-diabetic population, that individuals enter the high-risk category at an older age if they’re a woman versus the age at which men enter the high-risk category.”