Type 2 diabetes is a risk factor for heart failure and a common comorbidity in heart failure patients. New results from a large cohort study in Asia show that, for people with heart failure, having diabetes is associated with changes to the structure of the heart, lower quality of life, more readmissions to hospital, and higher risk of death.
Dr. Jonathan Yap
Jonathan Yap, MBBS, MPH, of the National Heart Centre in Singapore, and colleagues, looked at data from a cohort enrolling 6,167 heart failure patients in 11 Asian countries for the prospective ASIAN-HF (Asian Sudden
Cardiac Death in Heart Failure) registry. The researchers identified 5,028 patients with heart failure and reduced left ventricle ejection fraction (LVEF; 22% women), of whom 40% had type 2 diabetes. They also looked at 1,139 patients in the registry with heart failure and preserved LVEF (51% women), of whom 45% had type 2 disease. Controls without heart failure (n = 985; 9% with diabetes) from the SHOP (Singapore Heart Failure Outcomes and Phenotypes) study were included in the analysis, which was published August 21 in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
For both heart failure phenotypes, diabetes was associated with left ventricular hypertrophy, but there was no similar association in patients without diabetes. Dr. Yap and his colleagues reported differences in cardiac remodeling based on heart failure phenotype: The reduced LVEF patients had more eccentric hypertrophy, or dilation, of the left ventricular chamber, whereas the preserved LVEF patients had more concentric hypertrophy, or thickening, of the left ventricular wall.
The researchers also reported that patients with diabetes had lower health-related quality of life scores in both heart failure groups, compared with patients without diabetes, although those in the latter group with preserved LVEF did significantly worse on some quality of life measures. Patients with diabetes had more heart failure rehospitalizations (adjusted hazard ratio, 1.27; 95% confidence interval, 1.05-1.54; P = .014) and higher 1-year rates of a combined measure of all-cause mortality and hospitalization for heart failure (aHR, 1.22; 95% CI, 1.05-1.41; P = .011). No differences were seen between phenotypes for these outcomes.
Dr. Yap and colleagues noted that this was the first large, multinational study investigating diabetes and heart failure in Asia and that “no prior studies have concomitantly included both HF types or controls without HF from the same population.” They listed among the study’s limitations a lack of uniform screening for diabetes that may have resulted in under-identification of diabetics in the cohort.
The Singapore government, the Biomedical Research Council, Boston Scientific, and Bayer sponsored the study. One coauthor disclosed receiving pharmaceutical industry support.
Source: Yap J et al. J Am Heart Assoc. 2019 Aug. doi: 10.1161/JAHA.119.013114.