BOSTON – Women with type 1 diabetes had a high prevalence of systemic collagen vascular diseases in a recent study, suggesting a global or progressive loss of immune tolerance, investigators reported at the annual meeting of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists.
“The median time of diagnosis for most of those autoimmune diseases was years after the diabetes diagnosis,” according to investigator Yicheng Bao, a medical student at University of Missouri-Kansas City.*
“I think there’s some loss of immune tolerance in these patients with type 1 diabetes that really deserves more study as these patients get older,” Mr. Bao said in a video interview.
The study from Mr. Bao and his colleagues was based on patient questionnaire responses and medical chart reviews for 1,167 adults with type 1 diabetes, including 628 women.
They found that SCVDs occurred in 9.2% of women, who had a significantly higher risk versus men (adjusted odds ratio, 2.57; 95% confidence interval, 1.98-3.34; P less than 0.0001).
Rheumatoid arthritis was the most commonly diagnosed SCVD, occurring in 4.3% of the women, followed by psoriasis at 2.6% and lupus at 1.8%. Others occurring in less than 1% of women included Sjögren’s, mixed connective tissue disease, granulomatosis with polyangiitis, juvenile RA, and scleroderma.
Older women were at higher risk of SCVD, with a mean age of 53.6 years versus 46.3 years for women with no SCVD (P = 0.006).