TOPLINE:

A study of over 2 million adults with type 2 diabetes (T2D) showed that those with intellectual disability had a higher risk for cardiovascular diseases, particularly stroke, than those without intellectual disability, despite the former having fewer comorbidities at baseline.

METHODOLOGY:

• Individuals with intellectual disability have a high risk for cardiovascular diseases, and coexisting T2D may further exacerbate this risk due to challenges in self-management and accessing appropriate healthcare associated with such conditions.
• Researchers investigated the risk for cardiovascular diseases faced by individuals with both intellectual disability and T2D by analyzing the data of 2,062,821 adults with T2D aged 20 years or older from a database in Korea; intellectual disability was identified in 0.22% of participants.
• Incident cardiovascular disease, defined as the first diagnosis of myocardial infarction or stroke, was identified based on standard diagnostic codes.

TAKEAWAY:

• Compared with individuals without intellectual disability, those with intellectual disability were younger, were more likely to be women, have obesity, and be treated with insulin-based or triple‐drug regimens for diabetes and had lower rates of hypertension and dyslipidemia.
• Over a median follow-up duration of 6 years, cardiovascular diseases developed in 258 individuals in the group with intellectual disability (incident rate, 10.1 per 1000 person-years) vs 111,192 individuals in the group with no disability (incident rate, 9.0 per 1000 person-years).
• Individuals with intellectual disability had a higher overall risk for cardiovascular diseases than those with no disability (hazard ratio [HR], 1.72; 95% CI, 1.52-1.94); risks were heightened for both myocardial infarction (HR, 1.57; 95% CI, 1.32-1.87) and stroke (HR, 1.91; 95% CI, 1.62-2.25) in these patients.
• Compared with individuals without any disability, those with intellectual disability had the highest risk for cardiovascular diseases (HR, 1.72), followed by individuals with other disabilities (HR, 1.35).

IN PRACTICE:

“These findings highlight the need for targeted interventions to reduce the cardiovascular risk in this vulnerable population,” the authors wrote.

SOURCE:

This study was led by Jong-Ha Baek, Gyeongsang National University College of Medicine in Changwon, Korea. It was presented at European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) Annual Meeting in Vienna, Austria.

LIMITATIONS:

This abstract did not explicitly mention any limitations. However, because the study relied on data from a single country’s health insurance database, its findings may not be generalizable to other healthcare systems or populations.

DISCLOSURES:

This study did not mention any source of funding. No relevant conflicts of interest were reported.

This article was created using several editorial tools, including AI, as part of the process. Human editors reviewed this content before publication.