Diabetic Women at Higher Risk of Heart Failure

Researchers from the University of Alabama have found that diabetes increases the risk of illness and death in women with heart failure much more than in men. They found older women to be even worse off than younger ones.

Led by Ali Ahmed, Associate Professor in the Division of Gerontology, Geriatrics and Palliative Care and Director of UAB’s Geriatric Heart Failure Clinic and Geriatric Heart Failure Research, the research team took a look at 2,056 heart failure patients with diabetes. The patients were compared to the same number of non-diabetic heart failure patients with similar characteristics at baseline.

All the study participants were part of the Digitalis Investigational Group (DIG) trial, a multi-center trial funded by the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, one of the National Institutes of Health. 7788 patients across 302 sites in the US and Canada were covered under the DIG trial.

The researchers used a technique called propensity score matching to design their study. This ensured they remained blinded to study outcomes in a randomized clinical trial. The average follow-up period was 38 months with analysis performed in two stages. In the first stage differences in the effect of diabetes in male and female heart failure patients were analysed while in the second, age was factored in to study the effect of diabetes.

The primary finding of the research team was that diabetes was associated with a significant increase in the risk of death and hospitalization in women patients with heart failure. They also found that outcomes in women over the age of 65 were worse than in men or younger women.

“Our results suggest that heart failure patients should be thoroughly evaluated for the presence of diabetes and if it is present, should be intensively managed based on published guidelines,” said Ahmed. “Further studies should test current interventions and develop new ones to reduce the adverse effects of diabetes in heart failure patients in general, and among older adults in particular.”

Findings of the study have been published online in the journal Heart.

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