Risk Factor Control Can Mitigate Danger from Type 2 Diabetes

Diabetes has been considered as dangerous as cardiovascular disease in its association with death and cardiovascular events, but to what extent can modifying patients' risk factors mitigate this association? Investigators made use of a Swedish national registry enrolling people with type 2 diabetes to determine whether the excess risk for death and cardiovascular events (stroke, acute myocardial infarction, and hospitalization for heart failure) could be reduced or eliminated with control of five risk factors — glycated hemoglobin, LDL cholesterol, albuminuria, smoking, and blood pressure.

During a median follow-up of 5.7 years, the investigators compared 271,174 people with diabetes to 1,355,870 controls without diabetes and matched by age,…