Abdominal fat and early vascular aging in type 1 diabetes

A study published in the journal Diabetes Research and Clinical Practiceand carried out by a team from the Institut d’Investigació i Innovació Parc Taulí (I3PT), in collaboration with the Institut d’Investigació Sanitària Pere Virgili (IISPV) and the Hospital del Mar Research Institute (IMIM), has concluded that Abdominal fat is clearly associated with early vascular aging in patients with type 1 diabetes without previous cardiovascular history.

This work has been based on a cohort of 179 people with the aforementioned pathologyall of them evaluated at the Parc Taulí University Hospital in Sabadell in Barcelona under the coordination of Dr. José Miguel González-Clemente, who is also the head of the diabetes-cardiovascular risk group at the I3PT, and Joan Vendrell, who is a researcher at the IISPV. All of this has been carried out as part of a working group of the Network Biomedical Research Center for Diabetes and Associated Metabolic Diseases of the Carlos III Health Institute (CIBERDEM-ISCIII).

“In type 1 diabetes, Insulin treatment is essential to control blood glucosebut, over the years, it can favor a gradual weight gain associated with a greater risk of complications”, has introduced González-Clemente, for whom abdominal fat “favors loss of arterial elasticitya process linked to the degradation of elastin, an essential protein of the vascular wall.”

In the researcher’s opinion, this situation “can be the basis for complications, such as heart attack, stroke, circulatory deficits in the lower extremities or damage to the retina, kidneys and peripheral nervous system“. Therefore, the data obtained in this study becomes important: despite having good control of glycemia, blood pressure and lipid profile, approximately 10% of the people studied showed signs of early vascular aging.

Waist-height index

Thus, to easily identify people at greater risk of vascular aging, this research has focused on the waist-height indexwhich is an indicator that is calculated dividing waist circumference by height. The results have shown that a value equal to or greater than 0.56 It is associated with accelerated vascular aging, determined by pulse wave velocity, a non-invasive technique that allows arterial stiffness to be quantified.

“Virtually all people with a high pulse wave velocity had this index equal to or greater than 0.56“, confirmed González-Clemente, who stressed that other common indicators, such as body mass index (BMI) and waist-hip ratiodo not detect this risk with the same precision. Therefore, he believes that “early controlling this index would allow action before obesity is established, would facilitate better metabolic control and reduce the risk of long-term vascular complications.”

Now, as they have highlighted from the I3PTthe next step will be to validate these results in larger cohorts and with longer follow-up and, along with this, they have indicated that this study also suggests that some drugs used in patients with type 2 diabetes to reduce weight they could be useful in people with type 1 of this disease.