Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: The association of hypertension and type 2 diabetes is frequent. These two pathologies constitute each a cardiovascular risk factor with a cumulative effect which increases the cardiovascular morbi-mortality of hypertensive diabetics.

Objective: To measure and compare the frequency of degenerative complications of diabetes in hypertensive and non-hypertensive diabetics.

Patients and method: The study was descriptive, retrospective and included 184 type 2 diabetic patients followed at the service C of the National Institute of Nutrition of Tunis.

Results: The mean age was 61±10 years, with a sex ratio M/F of 0.56. The mean duration of diabetes was 14±8 years, the mean glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) was 10.6%. It was noted that 69.5% of patients had hypertension. The prevalence of microangiopathy was globally higher in hypertensive diabetics than in non-hypertensive patients (retinopathy: 33.6% vs 8.9%; neuropathy: 26.6% vs 17.8%; nephropathy: 43% vs 3.6%). Similarly, the prevalence of macroangiopathies was higher in hypertensive diabetics (stroke: 3.9% versus 0.54%; coronary artery disease: 18.8% versus 1.6%; and cerebral artery disease: 6.3% versus 1.8%).

Conclusion: Hypertension is often associated with type 2 diabetes. It worsens the cardiovascular prognosis and accelerates the onset of degenerative complications. Adequate management of arterial hypertension is therefore necessary to reduce the cardiovascular risk of diabetic patients.