Type 2 Diabetes and Women’s Heart Health: New research indicates a much higher percentage of the incidence of atrial fibrillation among women who also had Type 2 diabetes.

MayoClinic.com suggests that, “During atrial fibrillation, the heart’s two upper chambers (the atria) beat chaotically and irregularly — out of coordination with the two lower chambers (the ventricles) of the heart. Atrial fibrillation is an irregular and often rapid heart rate that commonly causes poor blood flow to the body and symptoms of heart palpitations, shortness of breath and weakness.

“Atrial fibrillation can also cause fatigue and stroke. It’s often caused by changes in your heart that occur as a result of heart disease or high blood pressure. Episodes of atrial fibrillation can come and go, or you may have chronic atrial fibrillation.

“Although atrial fibrillation itself usually isn’t life-threatening, it is a medical emergency. It can lead to complications. Treatments for atrial fibrillation may include medications and other interventions to try to alter the heart’s electrical system.”

HealthDay New quotes study author Gregory Nichols, “We found that people with diabetes have about a 44 percent higher prevalence of atrial fibrillation. When we stratified the data by sex, the association was still elevated for men — but not statistically significant — but for women, it was still statistically significant.”

The study released in the October 2009 issue of Diabetes Care does not pinpoint a definitive cause, but “The authors theorize that diabetes may affect the cardiac autonomic nerves in much the same way the disease damages peripheral nerves and causes a condition known as peripheral neuropathy.”

Dr. Howard Weintraub, clinical director of the Center for the Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease at the NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City is not convinced, “In people with diabetes, the cluster of other cardiac risk factors, like obesity and hypertension, increases the risk of atrial fibrillation,” he said.

Essentially what this means is there is new data to report, but not firm conclusion. What this information does provide is a new mechanism of study that may help in answering the question of cause and allow medical science to pursue a solution.

The study that finds medical professionals asking more questions collected, “data from more than 10,000 members of an HMO diabetes registry who had type 2 diabetes, and then matched them by age and sex to more than 7,000 people without diabetes. The study period was January 1999 through December 2008.”

One of the key progressions from this study is that new physicians can pay close attention to the possibility of atrial fibrillation among female Type 2 diabetic patients. Nichold noted that, “among women, diabetes was a stronger predictor of atrial fibrillation than obesity and elevated blood pressure.”

The HealthDay News reported, “this study didn’t include comparisons of echocardiograms (an imaging test of the heart), which would have allowed researchers to assess heart health at the start of the study, and ensure that no one with preexisting, but undiagnosed, heart disease was included. Additionally, the researchers didn’t look to see if blood sugar control made a difference in the rates of atrial fibrillation.”

It should further be noted that while an increase of 44% is significant the report further states that, “the overall incidence of atrial fibrillation was 3.6 percent among people with type 2 diabetes, while the rate for people without the metabolic condition was only 2.5 percent.” Essentially the overall incidence of this disorder occurs in a relatively small percentage of adults, still this information will have a bearing in the care of diabetic patients.