Does Diabetes Impact Lung Function?
Adults with diabetes have a 1.6-fold higher risk of restrictive lung function impairment than those without diabetes, independent of baseline lung function, according to the results of a recent study.
Previous research has suggested that adults with diabetes have lower forced vital capacity (FVC) than those without diabetes, but little data is available on the association between diabetes and restrictive lung function, the researchers noted.
They conducted a 5-year prospective study including 7524 participants aged 40 to 69 years without lung function impairment at baseline. Restrictive and obstructive lung function impairment were defined as FVC < 80% predicted and forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1) to FVC ratio (FEV1/FVC) < 0.70, respectively.
During follow-up, 171 and 639 of the participants developed restrictive and obstructive lung function impairment, respectively. Those with diabetes had a 1.6-fold grear risk of restrictive lung function impairment than those without diabetes after the researchers adjusted for sex, age, height, abdominal obesity, smoking status, exercise habits, systolic blood pressure, HDL-cholesterol, log-transformed high-sensitivity C-reactive protein, and baseline lung function.
However, those with diabetes did not have a significantly higher risk of obstructive lung function impairment.
“Diabetes was associated with restrictive lung function impairment but not obstructive lung function impairment,” the researchers concluded.
—Michael Potts
Reference:
Sonoda N, Morimoto A, Tatsumi Y, et al. A prospective study of the impact of diabetes mellitus on restrictive and obstructive lung function impairment: the Saku study [published online December 28, 2017]. Metabolism. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.metabol.2017.12.006.
