In the article "Profinflammatory cytokines are increased in type 2 diabetic women with cardiovascular disease", nondiabetic and diabetic women with and without cardiovascular disease are tested for plasma cytokine concentration (IL-1beta, IL-6, TNF-alpha). This article was particularly interesting to me because of how it described the snowball effect with diseases. During the last discussion, someone briefly mentioned how the inflammatory system had somewhat of a snowball effect (on the cellular level) where if one cytokine was present, more would be produced as an effect which would then signal for something else, etc, etc. In this article, it was suggested that inflammation effects many diseases/pathways at one time. For example, inflammation in type 2 diabetes can cause circulates cytokines which can aggravate atherosclerosis. Therefore hinting that if you have inflammation and type 2 diabetes, it would be likely for you to develop/encourage athersclerosis and heart problems. I think that this is the scary truth, but nonetheless, very fascinating. Note: Although this article does mention correlations, it states that there has been no studies that have grasped the correlation of cytokine concentrations in women with both cardiovascular disease and diabetes
In addition to disease relationships, this article reported some facts. Here are a few that I found pertinent.
- 17 million people in U.S. have diabetes. 95% of those people have type 2 diabetes.
- in 2000, CVD was #1 cause of death among women in U.S. (American Heart Association)
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5 comments:
Does the imflamation result from the type 2 diabetes or from the formation of atherosclerotic plaques?
Does a persons body type, android or gynoid, have a bearing on their risk for developing heart disease, diabetes or other related problems? I found an article that suggest it does at (hit manual download once there)
http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/141/12/1117
There's another article at http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=3052325
it's actually scarier than that...the numbers have increased (would you call this a "pandemic?") to over 20 million people with type 2 diabetes and close to 1/2 billion at risk!
Cody- I am not sure of your question, but I am assuming that you are inquiring about the correlation between type 2 diabetes and the aggravation of atherosclerosis. If so, the best way that I can think of expressing my view on it would be to say that the atherosclerosis is a direct result from the buildup of athersclerositic plaques which are a direct result of the cytokines released by the inflammation from type 2 diabetes. However, this does not mean that athersclerosis only occurs from proinflammatory cytokines, becuase it involves different cytokines. My observation was that the inflammation (cytokines) from type 2 diabetes progresses athersclerosis indirectly.
Lisa- cool article! I think that would be very interesting to expand on if we had more time with obesity. I think we can just tie it in with the visceral fat assumptions.
Dr. Cohen- I would call this a pandemic since it is so widespread and will only increase in size and geographic region.
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