Big blood sugar swings in diabetes patients may increase heart disease risk

"The underlying mechanism for the relationship between wide variations in blood sugar levels between doctor's appointments and high risk of heart disease in patients with type 2 diabetes is unclear," said Gang Hu, MD, PhD, Associate Professor and Director, Chronic Disease Epidemiology Lab at Pennington Biomedical Research Center. "It's possible that episodes of severely low blood sugar may be the connection."

Research has shown that wide variations in blood sugar levels are associated with poor health outcomes and even death. A 2017 Johns Hopkins study found that one-third of people with diabetes hospitalized for a severe low blood sugar episode died within three years of the incident.

"We recommend that patients and their doctors implement therapies that can reduce wide swings in blood sugar levels and the associated episodes of severe low blood sugar," Dr. Hu said. "Our findings suggest that measuring the swings in blood hemoglobin A1c levels over a specific time - six months to a year, for example - could serve as a supplemental blood sugar target," he added.

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