Hernández M, et al. – The present study was to observe the prevalence of carotid atherosclerotic plaques in patients with latent autoimmune diabetes of the adults (LADA) as compared with patients with classic type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes. It has been validated that LADA patients do not present with less carotid atherosclerosis than patients with type 1 and type 2 diabetes. Their macrovascular risk occurs despite a healthier macrovascular risk profile than those patients with type 2 diabetes.

Methods

• For this research, patients with LADA were matched for age and gender in different proportions to patients with type 2 diabetes, and classic type 1 diabetes.
• None of the patients had clinical cardiovascular disease.
• In this analysis, all subjects underwent B–mode carotid ultrasound to detect atheroma plaques.
• They obtained demographics from all subjects.
• They recruited 71 patients with LADA, 191 patients with type 2 diabetes and 116 patients with type 1 diabetes.

Results

• The data suggested that carotid atherosclerosis was more frequent in patients with LADA compared with type 2 diabetes (73.2% vs. 56.9%, P = 0.0018) and classic type 1 diabetes (57.1%, P = 0.026); these changes occurred despite healthier macrovascular risk profiles in the former. Age (P < 0.001), smoking (P = 0.003) and hypertension (P = 0.019) were independently associated with carotid atherosclerosis.
• Evidence showed that multiple plaques were also more frequent in patients with LADA as compared with classic type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes (45.1% and 33.6% vs. 27.2%, respectively, P = 0.022).
• It was noted that prevalence of carotid plaques increased with increasing diabetes duration in LADA patients compared with type 2 diabetes (85.7% vs. 58.8%, inverse OR 5.72 [1.5–21.8]; P = 0.009).