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Friday, July 10, 2009

What Drug Lowers Risk for Cardiovascular Disease Among Diabetics with Kidney Disease?

Cardiovascular disease and diabetes are linked in the sense that the diabetics have a higher risk for heart troubles than their counterpart who do not have diabetes. The question therefore that begs an answer is what can we do to lower that risk?

That risk can be reduced by maintaining the ABC's of diabetes at acceptable level. How do we do this? This can be done by eating healthy, exercising regularly and taking medication as prescribed. Losing weight if applicable is also part of maintaining the ABC.

Every little step you take will help maintain the ABC. Once the numbers come nearer the target levels, the chance to prevent heart attack is higher, much higher. Smoking is a great no, no. If you are smoking, quit. It is as simple as that. Now what do these ABC stand for anyway?

A is for A1C which tells the story of where your average blood sugar is up to in the preceding two to three months. In fact, this is now what they advocate as the way to diagnose diabetes instead of that fasting glucose test. The recommendation is to target the A1C of below 7.

B is for blood pressure that tells the story of how hard your heart has to work because it measures the force of blood in the blood vessels. The recommendation is to keep the blood pressure reading to below 130/80 mmHg.

Now how about the C? Well it stands for cholesterol which is the amount of fat in the blood. Just to get us confused, there are two kinds. There's the HDL which is our friend because it aids in protecting the heart. And there is the LDL which we can call frenemy (This is a new word just added recently to the dictionary) which means a fake friend because it clogs our blood vessel.

The Journal of the American Society of Nephrology reports in the January issue that treating patients with CKD (chronic kidney disease) with pioglitazone may lower the risk for cardiovascular disease. A new study on this confirms this.

University of Cologne's Dr. Christian A. Schneider of Germany said that this drug reduced death and cardiovascular occurrence when they studied more than 5000 type 2 diabetics who were at high risk for cardiovascular disease due to damage to the large blood vessels.

The patients treated with pioglitazone showed a lower risk for cardiovascular occurrence when compared to those assigned to take the placebo. The rate of death and cardiovascular events was reduced by 33.33%. It was noted that the decrease happened among those with lower stage of kidney function.

Dr. Schneider said their findings may not apply to diabetics with lower risk for cardiovascular events. Caution should be exercised when looking at the result of their study until it is further confirmed. This research was supported by Takeda Pharmaceutical Company. Let’s just follow the recommendation to lower the cardiovascular disease.

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