Incidence of heart failure in 2,737 older persons with and without diabetes mellitus

Abstract

Study objectives To investigate in older persons whether diabetes mellitus is an independent risk factor for congestive heart failure (CHF).Design A prospective study was performed in 2,737 older persons investigating the incidence of new CHF in persons with and without diabetes mellitus.Setting A long-term health-care facility.Patients Eight hundred sixty-five men and 1,872 women, with a mean age of 81+/-9 years.Measurements and results At 43-month follow-up, new CHF developed in 272 of 690 persons (39%) with diabetes mellitus and in 467 of 2,047 persons (23%) without diabetes mellitus (p < 0.0001). Cox regression analysis showed that age (p = 0.0001, risk ratio = 1.048), hypertension (p = 0.0001, risk ratio = 2.524), coronary artery disease (p = 0.0001, risk ratio = 4.008), male gender (p = 0.0001, risk ratio = 1.399), and diabetes mellitus (p = 0.0003, risk ratio = 1.337) were significantly positively associated with the time to the development of CHF.Conclusions Older persons with diabetes mellitus had a 1.3 times higher chance of developing CHF than those without diabetes mellitus after controlling the confounding effects of other prognostic variables.