Long-Term Diabetes Triples Stroke Risk

Type 2 diabetes is fat person diabetes.

Having diabetes for a decade or more dramatically increases the risk for ischemic stroke, report researchers.

The new study, published online March 1 in the journal Stroke, found diabetes increases risk 3% each year and triples at 10 years.

"We were not surprised to see an increased risk," senior investigator Mitchell Elkind, MD, from Columbia University Medical Center in New York City, told Medscape Medical News. "But we were taken aback by how high the risk was."

Using data from the Northern Manhattan Study, investigators looked at 3298 multi-ethnic participants. They found that 22% had diabetes at baseline and another 10% went on to develop the disease over the course of the study. There were 244 ischemic strokes.

"Our study provides evidence that the risk of ischemic stroke increased continuously with duration of diabetes mellitus," the authors explain. This was after controlling for other factors such as age, smoking history, physical activity, history of heart disease, blood pressure, and cholesterol.

"The increase is not as much during the second half of the first decade," they noted, "but it increases steeply as the disease enters its second decade."

As soon as we stop paying for this disease of choice and its sequelae, rates will plummet.

Time to start withholding the cash?

Now.