What role do age, gender, and race play?
The results of a study over 15 years in the making were released recently and provide some interesting insight into the development of diabetes along with race, sex, and age lines.
The Reasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS) Study followed over 23,000 non-Hispanic black and white U.S. adults aged ≥45 years without prevalent stroke at baseline (2003–2007). Diabetes was defined as fasting glucose ≥126 mg/dL, or random glucose ≥200 mg/dL, or use of glucose-lowering medication.
Over 19 percent of study subjects presented with diabetes at baseline and just over 1,000 stroke events occurred during the follow-up period. For people under age 65, the risk of stroke was increased most for white women, followed by white men and black women. Black men did not see their risk of stroke increase.
However, for those ages 65 and older, diabetes increased the risk of stroke for white women and black men, but not for black women or white men.
“With the recent increase in the burden of diabetes complications at younger ages in the U.S., additional efforts are needed earlier in life for stroke prevention among adults with diabetes,” wrote the study’s authors.
The results were published in this month’s edition of Diabetes Care.
