Excessive blood sugar shifts in patients with type 2 diabetes are associated with a high risk for heart disease

In patients with type 2 diabetes, large shifts in blood sugar levels between doctor visits are associated with an increased risk for heart disease.

The study, published in the journal Diabetes, obesity & metabolism, it looked at more than 29,000 patients with type 2 diabetes over a two-year period. Patients who already had heart disease were excluded.

The Diabetes Association of America recommends that adults with diabetes maintain A1c, the average blood sugar level over the past two to three months, less than 7 percent to prevent complications from diabetes. -diabetes, such as heart disease. However, studies – including this one – have shown that broad fluctuations in blood sugar levels may be a better predictor of diabetic complications than the A1c reading at any doctor’s office visit.

The underlying mechanism for the association between wide variations in blood sugar levels between doctor appointments and high risk for heart disease in patients with type 2 diabetes is unclear. These may be due to very low blood sugar events. “

Gang Hu, MD, PhD, Associate Professor and Director, Epidemiology Laboratory of Kidney Disease at Pennington Biomedical Research Center

Research has shown that widespread changes in blood sugar levels are associated with adverse health outcomes and even death. A 2017 Johns Hopkins study found that a third of diabetic people died in hospital for a low blood sugar event within three years of the event.

“We recommend that patients and their physicians implement medications that may result in a widespread reduction in blood sugar levels and the times associated with severely low blood sugar,” said Dr. Hu. “Our findings suggest that measuring the gaps in A1c blood hemoglobin levels over a given period of time – six months to a year, for example – could be an additional blood sugar target,” he said.