Causes of death, incidence and risk factors of cardiovascular diseases in Thai type 2 diabetic patients: a 5 year follow-up study.

There appear to be ethnic disparities in frequencies of diabetic complications in type 2 diabetic patients and such data from Asian countries are relatively few and limited. Thai type 2 diabetic patients who attended the diabetic clinic at Prince of Songkla University hospital during January-December 1997 and had no history of coronary heart disease (CHD) and stroke were studied to determine cause of death and to establish the incidence of and risk factors for cardiovascular disease (CVD). All patients were followed to death or to the end of year 2001. End-points included death from any cause, fatal and nonfatal CHD, fatal and nonfatal stroke and lower-extremity amputation. There were 229 patients who were followed for 4.2+/0.7 (S.D.) years (range: 0.6-5.0) with total follow-up period 958.2 patient-years. Twenty-nine patients died during follow-up; the total mortality rate was 30.3 (95%CI 20.2-43.4)/1000 patient-years. Of these, 9(9.4/1000 patient-years; 95%CI 4.3-17.8) died from sepsis, 7(7.3/1000 patient-years; 95%CI 2.9-15.0) from CVD, 5(5.2/1000 patient-years; 95%CI 2.7-12.2) from end-stage renal disease, 3(3.1/1000 patient-years; 95%CI 0.6-9.2) from malignancy and 1(1.0/1000 patient-years; 95%CI 0.03-5.8) from peripheral vascular disease. The incidences of fatal and nonfatal CHD as well as fatal and nonfatal stroke were 21.4(95%CI 13.0-33.0)/1000 and 12.8(95%CI 6.6-22.4)/1000 patient-years, respectively whereas the incidence of lower-extremity amputation was 4.3(95%CI 1.2-10.9)/1000 patient-years. Age, the presence of proteinuria and serum HDL-C < or = 0.9 mmol/l were independent risk factors of CHD with the respective Hazard ratios 1.09(95%CI: 1.02-1.17; P=0.016), 4.41(95%CI: 1.18-16.45; P=0.027) and 3.91(95%CI: 1.20-12.80; P=0.024). In conclusion, sepsis and CVD were the major causes of death accounting for approximately 50% of total mortality in Thai type 2 diabetic patients. Age, the presence of proteinuria and low HDL-C were independent risk factors for the development of CHD. The mortality from and the incidence of CHD in Thai type 2 diabetic patients are lower than those reported from Caucasian populations but the incidence of stroke appears to be higher. These findings need to be confirmed by a large-scale population-based study.