Diabetes and lifetime risk of coronary heart disease

Abstract Introduction Epidemiological estimate lifetime risk (LTR) is a measure that expresses the probability of disease in the remaining lifetime for individuals of a specific index age. These estimates can be useful for general audience targeted knowledge translation activities against diabetes. There are only a few reports on lifetime of impact of diabetes on coronary heart disease (CHD) events. Methods The Suita Study, a cohort study of cardiovascular diseases (CVD), was established in 1989. We included all participants who were CVD free at baseline. Age (in years) was used as the time scale. Age-specific incidence rates were calculated with person-year method within ten-year bands. We estimated the sex and index-age specific LTR of first-ever CHD with taking the competing risk of death into account. Results We followed 5559 participants without CHD history during 1989–2007 for 71,745.4 person-years. At age 40 years the competing risk of death adjusted LTR for all CHD were 16.61% for men without diabetes and 21.06% for men with diabetes. Therefore the LTD for CHD was higher by 4.45% for men with diabetes compared to men without. The competing risk adjusted LTR of CHD at 40 years of aged women was 9.18% for without diabetes and 14.21% for with diabetes. This increased LTR of CHD for diabetic patients were observed among both men and women across all index ages. Conclusion In this urban community based population we observed that diabetes has significant effect on the residual LTR of CHD among both men and women of middle age. This easy understandable knowledge can be used as important indexes to assist public health education and planning.