Patients with type 2 diabetes are at increased risk for developing coronary heart disease. Recently, multidetector computed tomography (MDCT) has emerged as a promising modality to detect coronary heart disease. We studied the prevalence of coronary artery stenosis with 64-slice MDCT in asymptomatic type 2 diabetes patients and investigated the correlation of these findings with several clinical parameters.
Among 140 asymptomatic type 2 diabetes patients, 71 patients (50.7%) had coronary artery stenosis or calcification. The rate of coronary artery stenosis or calcification was higher in patients with established diagnoses of diabetes for more than 11 years (72.7% vs 43.0%), hypertension (61.4% vs 38.9%), brachial-ankle pulse wave velocity (baPWV) >1600 m/s (63.4% vs 29.1%) and maximal intima-media thickness (max IMT) >0.9 mm (66.7% vs 40.7%) compared to that in other patients. Max IMT was significantly higher in patients with coronary artery stenosis or calcification (0.775±0.246 mm vs 0.909±0.222 mm, p<0.01).
Our findings show that the prevalence of coronary stenosis in asymptomatic type 2 diabetes patients is high. In particular, the progression of max IMT is a greater risk factor for coronary heart disease. MDCT is an effective modality to detect subclinical coronary atherosclerosis in these patients at high risk.

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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Thirteen healthy 21 year-old college women took a test meal with vinegar in 50 g glucides. The blood glucose of each subject was measured over time with a portable blood glucose monitor, and how vinegar suppressed the postprandial elevation of blood glucose for each subject was evaluated. Taking carbohydrats with vinegar suppressed the postprandial elevation of blood glucose much more than taking carbohydrats only. In this study “low-blood glucose elevation” is defined as a postprandial incremental area under the blood glucose response curve (IAUC) below the median after eating rice, and “high-blood glucose elevation” is defined as a postprandial IAUC over the median. The effect of vinegar was not observed in a low-blood glucose elevation group, but vinegar significantly suppressed postprandial blood glucose in a high-blood glucose elevation group. In terms of the dose dependency, 20 ml vinegar suppressed postprandial blood glucose elevation much more than 10 ml vinegar. Vinegar is suggested to be effective for impaired glucose tolerance because of the effect of vinegar on postprandial blood glucose in the high-blood glucose elevation group, though low efficacy was observed in the low-blood glucose elevation group.

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