Abstract
Background: Diabetes patients are known to produce diabetic retinopathy. Pulse wave velocity (PWV) provides arterial stiffness and hemodynamic parameters. We studied the effect of diabetic retinopathy in different stages on arterial stiffness in diabetics. We measured vascular aging with a new system (pOpmètre) that measures PWV, Ankle-Brachial Index (ABI) and Central Blood pressure Methods: 83 type 1 diabetes patients attending the clinic (59% male) aged (42 ± 1.54 years). Insulin dependent diabetic patients with retinopathy (N = 61) or without retinopathy (N = 22) with abnormal albuminuria ratio (17%), mean diabetes duration 26 years. All patients underwent vascular assessment with pOpmètre (Axelife - France). The following parameters were measured in each patient, PWV, ABI and central Blood Pressure, non-invasively and without cuff compression. Results: PWV correlated with the degree of retinopathy (F = 13.80; p < 10^(-4)) and with aging (r2 = 0.25; p < 10^(-4)), and with diabetes duration (r2 = 0.12; p < 0.002) independently of gender, HbA1c, smoking, BMI, diabetes duration or lipid profile. Aging and diabetes duration were not associated (ANOVA, p = 0.5) to the degree of retinopathy unlike PWV. Conclusions: there is a high interdependence between microvascular and macrovascular lesions in this population of well treated type I diabetic patients with or without retinopathy.
Published Version
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