- Experts say the link with heart problems has perhaps not been fully understood
Young people with diabetes are at high risk of sudden death, according to a major study.
Danish researchers found that diabetics are significantly more likely to suffer sudden cardiac death than healthy people of the same age.
Surprisingly, this risk was greatest for people aged between 30 and 40 with type 1 diabetes – the genetic form of the disease.
This high-risk group is 20 times more likely to die of a heart problem.
Those aged 30 with type 2 diabetes – which is linked to being overweight or inactive – were nearly six times more likely.
People with diabetes often use blood sugar monitors, like this one pictured, to determine how much sugar is currently circulating in their blood stream. This helps them decide what to eat and when to use insulin to best manage their disease.
Experts say the findings prove it is crucial that young diabetes patients are monitored for heart problems.
‘These are very interesting results,’ says Professor Elijah Behr, a cardiologist at St George’s, University of London.
‘It has long been known that diabetes raises the risk of heart disease, but the potency of the effect was perhaps not understood.
‘It won’t necessarily change how we treat people at the moment, but it shows patients with diabetes should be monitored much more closely, especially as they may be at risk of other more common comorbidities.’
Sudden cardiac death – an unexplained cardiac arrest – kills 12 people under 35 every week in the UK, according to the British Heart Foundation.
Around 4.4 million people in the UK have type 2 diabetes. A further 400,000 have type 1.
Type 2 diabetes can be managed through a healthy diet and regular exercise. Drugs may be given if these measures fail. However, type 1 patients require regular doses of insulin, a hormone that reduces sugar levels in the blood.
Left untreated, diabetes in either form can lead to serious complications such as blindness and heart disease. But until now it was unclear just how early these complications become a serious risk.
‘Once you have an individual with diabetes, you need to monitor them for heart-related symptoms,’ says Professor Jacob Tfelt-Hansen, a diabetes expert at the University of Copenhagen, who presented the findings of the study at the European Society of Cardiology conference last month.
‘We know that up to 50 per cent of the young who have sudden cardiac death have symptoms of syncope [fainting] or angina [chest pain], for example.’
