The KID Study VI: Diabetic complications and associated diseases in younger type 2 diabetics still performing a profession. Prevalence and correlation with duration of diabetic state, BMI and C-peptide

A sub-study evaluated 698 younger (54.5 +/- 6.9 years) type 2 diabetics of the KID Study participants to establish the prevalence of diabetic complica tions and associated diseases and their correlation with body mass index (B MT), duration of disease and to C-peptide levels. Only 19.8% of the type 2 diabetics had a normal weight. In all weight subgr oups, the average age of diabetes manifestation were around age 45. In 46.6 % of all type 2 diabetics we could already demonstrate microangiopathic com plications. Strikingly, 15.9% of the patients already had proliferative ret inopathies and 12.6% had albuminuria of more than 1000 mg/dl. 74.7% of our type 2 diabetics presented with the well-known risk cluster of the metabolic syndrome: In every other patient, we found hypertension and/ or hyperlipoproteinaemia. Accordingly, the prevalence of the macroangiopath ic diabetic complications, coronary artery disease and peripheral Vascular disease was 17.8%, which is high for a relatively young population with a m ean age of 53.9 years and goes conform with recent literature (Lowel et al. , 1999). An increase in BMI correlated significantly with deterioration of HbA(1), a decrease in HDL cholesterol, an increase in triglycerides and with a highe r prevalence of hypertension. The frequency of nephropathy increase signifi cantly up to a BMI of 30-35 kg/m(2). Retinopathies and polyneuropathies wer e associated with BMI but increased significantly with the duration of the diabetic state. In contrast to microangiopathic diabetic complications, the re was already a high prevalence of nephropathy after a comparatively short duration of disease. The prevalence of hyperlipoproteinaemia and hypertens ion did not depend from the duration of diabetes. These concomitant disease s already were frequent early in the disease and did not increase with the duration of disease. However, there was a strong correlation between increa sing hyperlipoproteinaemia and hypertension and higher C-peptide levels. We found no coincidence between C-peptide levels and microangiopathic diabeti c complications.