Approved Research

Sex-specific cardiovascular mortality in type 2 diabetes mellitus

Lay summary

Around 9% of the adults of the word have diabetes mellitus. Unfortunately, this number is expected to increase as the people get older and more obese. Although there were important improvements in cardiovascular disease (CVD) morbidity and mortality in the course of recent decades, it is still the main cause of death in patients with diabetes. The presence of diabetes double the risk of dying of CVD. Importantly, while men has a greater cardiovascular risk than women without diabetes, the effects of diabetes on cardiovascular risk seems to be higher in women than in men.

Previous studies showed that women with diabetes have a higher risk of myocardial infarction and stroke than men. On the other hand, is still not clear the reasons for these findings. One of the possible explanations might be that women develop more cardiovascular risks than men when they become diabetic.

The UK biobank sample will allows us to examine with detailed clinical information how dyslipidemia and hypertension might sex-specifically influence the increase in cardiovascular mortality of diabetic patients and what this means for medical practice and public health policy regarding prevention and treatment. We aim to offer results that might improve the understanding of sex-specific CVD mortality and possible future individualized risk stratification and personalized treatment planning. The results of this study will be published in open access academic journals for the benefit of all participants in diabetes care and public health policy.

Scope extension: Besides the effects of dyslipidemia in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus, dyslipidemia may also has sex-specific effects in groups affected by other risk factors such as patients with hypertension, obesity and individuals with a lifestyle that include smoking, alcohol consumption and sedentarism. Moreover, besides the associations of dyslipidemia with cardiovascular mortality, there is previous analyses that demonstrated relations with aortic valve sclerosis and stenosis.