A prospective study of mortality among middle-aged diabetic patients (the London Cohort of the WHO Multinational Study of Vascular Disease in Diabetics) II: Associated risk factors.

Potential risk factors have been examined for association with mortality over a 10-12 year follow-up of the patients of the London Cohort of the WHO Multinational Study of Vascular Disease in Diabetics (aged 35-54 years at entry to the study). Proteinuria has the strongest association with all-cause mortality in univariate analysis being significant in patients of both sexes with Type 2 (non-insulin-dependent) diabetes mellitus and in women with Type 1 (insulin-dependent) diabetes mellitus; both systolic blood pressure (men) and hypertension (both sexes) (as a categorical variable) are significant in Type 1 diabetes. Hypertension is also significantly associated with all-cause mortality in multivariate analysis in both sexes with Type 1 diabetes as proteinuria is in women with Type 2 diabetes. There is an unexpected negative association between plasma creatinine and all-cause mortality in men with Type 2 diabetes. Systolic blood pressure and hypertension are also significantly linked with cardiovascular mortality in Type 1 diabetes, hypertension having an estimated relative risk of 4.6 [corrected] in multivariate analysis. Serum cholesterol and proteinuria showed the strongest associations with cardiovascular mortality in Type 2 diabetes. Proteinuria is associated with non-cardiovascular mortality in both types of diabetes in univariate but not multivariate analysis. In multivariate analysis hypertension (Type 1 diabetes) and diabetes duration (Type 2 diabetes) are associated with non-cardiovascular mortality. Hypertension and proteinuria have the most consistent associations with mortality in the different analyses with the effect of hypertension appearing stronger in Type 1 diabetes and proteinuria in Type 2 diabetes.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)