Bilgin Demir1, Sibel Demiral Sezer1, Ömercan Topaloğlu2, Emin Taşkıran1, Burcu Işık3, Utku Erdem Soyaltın1, Harun Akar1

1Department of Internal Medicine, Tepecik Training and Research Hospital, İzmir, Turkey
2Department of Internal Medicine, Ceylanpınar State Hospital, Şanlıurfa, Turkey
3Department of Ophthalmology, Tepecik Training and Research Hospital, İzmir, Turkey

Keywords: Arterial stiffness; diabetes mellitus; nephropathy; obesity; retinopathy.

Abstract

Objectives: In this trial, we aimed to define arterial stiffness (AS) parameters in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM) without any known coronary heart disease and compare our results with the incidence of complications of type 2 DM like abdominal obesity, nephropathy and retinopathy in our study population.
Patients and methods: We included 110 type 2 DM patients between the ages of 30-80, without any coronary heart disease with estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) value of above 30 m/min/1.73 m2 to our study. We recorded patients’, body weight, body mass indexes (BMI), conicity indexes (CI), waist circumferences, onset of diabetes, smoking habits, fundus evaluation, hypertension and hyperlipidemia background. Moderately increased albuminuria was used as a marker to identify the diabetic nephropathy. We measured the pulse wave velocity (PWV), augmentation index (AIx), arterial blood pressure of patients by using Mobil-O-Graph® ARC solver algorithm” device.
Results: PWV values were positively associated with CI, onset of type 2 DM, and systolic blood pressure. PWV values were negatively associated with eGFR. AIx values were positively associated with BMI, systolic blood pressure and heart rate. AIx values were negatively associated with hemoglobin level. Hypertension was positively associated with PWV. Smoking habits was negatively associated with AIx. There were no statistically association among complications of diabetes such as nephropathy, retinopathy and PWV, AIx values.
Conclusion: There were associations between AS and CI, eGFR, hemoglobin level, onset of diabetes, arterial blood pressure values of type 2 DM patients. There were no association between AS and nephropathy, retinopathy rates of type 2 DM patients. We assume that AS is an independent novel cardiovascular risk factor for patients diagnosed with obesity, anemia, hypertension and type 2 DM.