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Association between diabetes and coronary heart disease in Aboriginal people: are women disadvantaged?
Author(s) -
Wang Zhiqiang,
Hoy Wendy E
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
medical journal of australia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.904
H-Index - 131
eISSN - 1326-5377
pISSN - 0025-729X
DOI - 10.5694/j.1326-5377.2004.tb06054.x
Subject(s) - medicine , diabetes mellitus , body mass index , type 2 diabetes , incidence (geometry) , cohort , demography , cohort study , blood pressure , endocrinology , physics , sociology , optics
Objectives: To determine the incidence rate of coronary heart disease (CHD) in Australian Aboriginal people with type 2 diabetes, and to compare the impact of diabetes on CHD risk in Aboriginal women and men. Design: Cohort study. Setting: A remote Aboriginal community in the Northern Territory. Participants: 889 Aboriginal people aged 20–74 years followed up to 31 May 2003 after baseline examination in 1992–1995. Main outcome measures: Incidence rates of CHD (estimated for 123 participants with diabetes at baseline and 701 “non‐diabetes” participants); rate ratios for diabetes risk (95% CI), with “non‐diabetes” participants as the reference group. Results: Participants with diabetes at baseline had a higher rate of CHD (37.5 per 1000 person‐years) than those without diabetes (7.3 per 1000 person‐years). Adjustment for multiple CHD risk factors, such as age, smoking, alcohol consumption, systolic blood pressure, body mass index, high‐density lipoprotein cholesterol and total cholesterol levels, resulted in a CHD rate ratio for women of 3.7 (95% CI, 1.6–8.9) (comparing women with diabetes with those without) and a CHD rate ratio for men of 1.4 (95% CI, 0.4–4.1) (comparing men with diabetes with those without). Conclusions: Aboriginal women with diabetes experienced a significantly higher risk of CHD than women without diabetes. Although the difference was not statistically significant, women with diabetes had a higher CHD risk than men with diabetes.