Introduction: Hypoglycemia has been linked to increased cardiovascular (CV) events, however there is limited data about frequency of hypoglycemic episodes and CV outcomes. We aimed to evaluate the association of frequent hypoglycemic episodes (> 5/year) with incident CV events in adults with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM).
Methods: We queried a national database (IBM Explorys Solutions, IBM, Inc.) for adults with T2DM who had >5 hypoglycemic episodes (cases) vs. 1 to 5 hypoglycemic episodes (controls) in one year. Primary outcomes were overall CV adverse events, acute myocardial infarction (MI), cerebrovascular accident (CVA) and cardiac arrhythmias. Odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) for the OR were calculated for the risk of association between number of hypoglycemic episodes and incident CV events.
Results: Out of a total of 61,917,780 patients in Explorys, 4,882,710 had T2DM. Patients with >5 hypoglycemic episodes in 1 year (cases) had a higher incident risk of overall CV adverse events when compared to controls (OR: 1.61, 95% CI: 1.558, 1.663). In the stratified analysis, patients with frequent hypoglycemic episodes had a significantly higher incidence of cardiac arrhythmias, acute MI, and CVA (Table 1).
Conclusion: Adults with T2DM with frequent hypoglycemic episodes (>5/year) tend to have higher incidence of adverse CV events.
O.A. Alaber: None. A.K. Chandar: None. B.A. Dahash: None. A.C. Zuzek: None. A. Rajpal: None.
