Renal involvement is related to body height in newly diagnosed diabetic women aged 40 years or over

We scrutinized the relation between body height and renal involvement in a large population-based sample of newly diagnosed diabetic patients aged 40 years or over. The urinary albumin concentration (UAC) was measured in fres hly voided morning urine in 1,284 newly diagnosed diabetic patients. The co urse of insulin treatment showed that at least 97.6% of the patients could be regarded as Type 2 diabetic. Linear regression analyses were done with l og UAC as dependent variable, and height, age, HbA1c, smoking habits, educa tion, occupation, body weight and systolic blood pressure as independent va riables. Median age was 65.3 years. In bivariate analyses UAC increased wit h decreasing height for women (R (S) = -0.090, p = 0.028), but not for men (R (S) = -0.049, p = 0.20). After backwards elimination in the regression m odels, height remained in the model for women only (p = 0.041). Our finding of a relationship between short stature and renal involvement in Type 2 di abetic female patients adds to existing evidence from studies with non-diab etic and Type 1 diabetic subjects.