Can Diabetes Cause Heart Failure?
Dr. Clyde Yancy answers the question: 'Can Diabetes Cause Heart Failure?'
— -- Question: Can diabetes cause heart failure?
Answer: Whenever one thinks about what causes heart disease, no matter whether we're talking about hardening of the arteries and heart attacks or we're talking about heart failure per se, we ultimately end up aligning or impugning diabetes as a very strong associated cause of heart disease and that includes heart failure.
Despite the evidence that diabetes is an incredibility important risk factor and it does lead to heart disease, several different types, we don't yet know if the truly effective therapy of diabetes as yet to be well defined reduces the likelihood of heart disease. We know that the worse that the diabetic state is the more likely and the more severe the heart disease will be.
What we don't yet understand is if we lower blood sugar with any of the available strategies that are presently in use, does that relate to less heart failure and less heart disease. We all think that it does, but we don't know if we yet have the right strategies to control diabetes and/or the right targets.
So under active investigation, the important issue is that it's a major risk factor, try to keep it under control, at the least it will make the heart disease that might occur less of an issue and at most it may actually retard or stop the development of heart disease if we can control the diabetes but we have to keep working.
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