Diabetes in Utah among adults: interaction between diabetes and other risk factors for microvascular and macrovascular complications.

From a telephone survey of the health status of a random sample of the general population of Utah, we identified 255 people with adult onset diabetes. We compared them to 622 non-diabetic controls, matched for age, sex, and urban/rural country of residence. We examined diabetes as a risk factor for heart diseases, stroke, and blindness and its interaction with other known risk factors. Diabetes interacted with smoking history so as to increase the risk of stroke, heart disease, and blindness. Diabetes also interacted with hypertension in their effect on the prevalence of blindness and, to a small extent, heart disease. Among the diabetics, duration of diabetes was associated with macrovascular and microvascular complications developing after the diagnosis of diabetes. Those with longer duration of disease showed an increase in risk for microvascular (kidney disease, blindness) and macrovascular (heart disease, stroke, amputations) complications. Although the estimates were imprecise, the effect of duration on macrovascular complications was greater among diabetics with a history of hypertension; the effect on microvascular complications was greater among smokers. The findings are compared to previous studies and the utility of diabetes prevalence data is discussed.