Less coronary disease seen in black diabetics
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Compared to whites with type 2 diabetes, blacks with type 2 diabetes suffer more heart attacks, strokes, and end-stage renal disease, but African Americans appear to have significantly lower rates of clinical coronary artery disease than whites.
Dr. Barry I. Freedman and colleagues from Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, North Carolina report the finding in the December issue of Diabetologia.
The team investigated whether there were ethnic differences in the amount of calcified plaque seen in the coronary and carotid arteries of more than 1100 patients with type 2 diabetes enrolled in a diabetes heart study.
Calcified plaque in the arteries was markedly lower in African-Americans than in whites, even though black subjects had a worse risk factor profile and significantly thicker walls of the carotid artery, the investigators report.
There were also gender differences. African-American men had lower coronary artery and carotid artery calcified plaque burden, the report indicates, whereas African-American women showed a trend toward reduction in carotid artery calcified plaque.
“These findings, observed despite poorer glycemic control, generally adverse cardiovascular disease risk factor profiles ... in African-Americans support the hypothesis that calcified atherosclerotic plaque does not have the same pathobiologic significance between ethnicities and genders,” the authors conclude.
SOURCE: Diabetologia, December 2005.
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