SPECIAL ARTICLE

This review article deals with the relation between hyperglycemia and myocardial infarction as observed after recovery from the acute attack or, to the extent that such data are available, antedating it. Hyperglycemia must be added to the various forms of hyperlipemia, positive caloric balance, hypertension, smoking, and others as a risk factor toward the development of manifest atherosclerosis. It remains to be established to what extent hyperglycemia, as one of multiple predisposing influences, is a predictive indicator in its own right. One part of this answer must come from prospective, epidemiological studies, the other from investigations of the interrelationships between lipid and carbohydrate metabolism in the different forms of hyperlipemia and the mechanisms by which hyperglycemia is produced.