Shorter people at ‘higher risk’ of diabetes

Shorter people are at greater risk of developing type 2 diabetes, according to a study published on Tuesday.

Each additional 10 centimetres in height translates into a 41 per cent smaller chance of contracting the disease in men and a 33 per cent smaller chance in women, according to the research in medical journal Diabetologia.

The greater health risk in shorter individuals is likely linked to higher liver fat content, and a larger number of risk factors for heart disease, stroke and diabetes, the authors speculated.

It has also been reported that insulin sensitivity and the functioning of special cells in the pancreas that secrete the hormone are better in taller people.

The study draws from a detailed medical survey of more than 16,600 women and nearly 11,000 men — aged 40 to 65 — in Potsdam, Germany from 1994 to 1998. “These observations corroborate that height is a useful predictive marker for diabetes risk,” the authors concluded.

People with diabetes have excessively high blood glucose, or blood sugar, which comes from food.

Some 420 million people around the world today suffer from diabetes, with the number expected to rise to 629 million by 2045, according to the International Diabetes Federation.

Currently, the disease is divided into two sub-types.

With type-1 — generally diagnosed in childhood and accounting for about 10 per cent of cases — the body simply doesn’t make insulin, a hormone that helps regulate blood sugar levels.

For type-2, the body makes some insulin but not enough, which means glucose stays in the blood.

This form of the disease correlates highly with obesity and can, over time, lead to blindness, kidney damage, heart disease or stroke. Acute cases may also require limb amputations.

Recently, researchers said that the new type of drugs for type 2 diabetes — SGLT2 inhibitors — are associated with a reduced risk of heart failure by 34 per cent. The new SGLT2 inhibitors, which are now a commonly used drug group, reduce blood glucose, they added. In the study published in the journal The BMJ, the researchers wanted to show if there were positive cardiovascular effects from SGLT2 inhibitors in a broader patient group.

“There is cardiovascular benefit from SGLT2 inhibitors for a broader patient group in routine clinical care. This is an important result that we believe may be of interest to patients as well as drug authorities and doctors,” said study principal investigator Bjorn Pasternak, Associate Professor at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden.

Agencies