Standard CV Risk Factors Don't Explain the Doubling of Vascular Disease Risk in Diabetes

Type 2 diabetes is fat person diabetes.

Diabetes is a risk factor not only for ischemic vascular diseases such as MI and ischemic stroke, it also seems to pose a significant risk across the spectrum of different forms of vascular disease, including hemorrhagic stroke, suggests a meta-analysis encompassing almost 700 000 patients [1]. Moreover, it showed that the elevated risks were largely independent of conventional cardiovascular risk factors, suggesting that diabetes must be raising vascular risk through less familiar mechanisms.

The study, according to Dr Nadeem Sarwar (University of Cambridge, UK), suggests that, contrary to expectations, "very little of the excess cardiovascular risk associated with diabetes is explained by obesity, blood pressure, lipids, inflammatory markers, or renal function." Controlling for those factors, he told heartwire , had little effect on the approximately twofold increase in vascular risk associated with diabetes.

"That means there are yet-to-be discovered pathways that better explain why people with diabetes are at increased [cardiovascular] risk," he said. And that risk accounts for a substantial amount of all cardiovascular disease. Sarwar and his colleagues estimate that, assuming 10% prevalence of diabetes across the adult population, diabetes on its own accounts for 11% of deaths due to vascular disease.

Kudos, fatsos.

On top of all the known risk factors you chose to develop, you have created mystery risks, too.