Husbands, Wives Will Often
Share Diabetes, Too
Excerpt by Jesse J. Logan, Reuters Health

People married to a person with type 2 diabetes are more than twice as likely to develop the condition themselves, compared to spouses of non-diabetics, according to a British study, which provides evidence that lifestyle has a "major influence" on diabetes risk.

The study, which included non-genetically related white, black and Asian couples over 50, found that diabetes risk for spouses of diabetics was comparable to that of people with a family history of the disease.

"If your brother, mother, father, or sister has diabetes, it's well known that you'll have an increased risk for diabetes," Dr. Tahseen Chowdhury of The Royal London Hospital, a co-author of the study, told Reuters Health. "This risk we found with the spouses was actually of a similar order to that sort of risk."

Chowdhury and colleagues compared type 2 diabetes and glucose intolerance among 245 people married to diabetics and 234 spouses of people who were not diabetic. Their findings are published in the March issue of the journal Diabetes Care.

Increasing obesity has driven the escalating rates of diabetes in both the US and Europe. As the researchers attempted to explain the link between married life and diabetes risk they looked at body mass index (BMI), a measure of weight in relation to height used to gauge obesity.

They found that wives and husbands of diabetics had higher BMIs, on average, and tended to have higher blood pressures than spouses of non-diabetics. Spouses of diabetics were found to have increased risk for diabetes even after researchers took into consideration BMI and other factors that could affect results.

Chowdhury suggested that "certain shared environmental factors or exposures" in marriage could leave couples at "high risk" for diabetes. These factors included obesity, diet and physical activity.

"We often see that both spouses may smoke. Both spouses do similar exercise levels," he said. "These sorts of factors all contribute to their increased risk."

And since the spouses of diabetics were more obese than people married to non-diabetics, he said, "that probably increases their risk for diabetes as well."

Chowdhury and colleagues suggest that spouses of diabetics be classified as "high risk" and screened for the disease. They also suggested that health professionals target the spouses of diabetes patients and even their families for early prevention.

"The biggest public health issue facing the developed and developing world is the issue of trying to reduce the prevalence of diabetes," Chowdhury said. "How to impact that on a huge population is the biggest challenge."

SOURCE: Diabetes Care 2003;26:710-712.

Reference Source 89

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