Objectives: In uremic patients with diabetes mellitus, morbi-mortality on maintenance hemodialysis is considerably higher than in nondiabetic patients. This is mainly due to age, seniority and quality of the hemodialysis therapy, nutritional status, plasmatic lipid levels and associated pathology. We compare all these factors in the uremic patients under hemodialysis in diabetics and non-diabetics.
Methods: We have studied 307 uremic patients under hemodialysis therapy during 199 and 1996. Sixty of them had been diagnosticated of diabetes mellitus (19.6%), 17 were type I (DM-I) and 27 were type II (DM-II). We selected two control groups no-diabetics, one for each subgroup of diabetics with similar characteristics in age, sex and hemodialysis seniority. The control group for DM-I were 34 patients and for DM-II were 54 patients.
Results: Ideal body weight percentage, body mass index, mid-arm muscle circumference percentil, serum albumin and prealbumin are subnormal for DM-I. By considering whole nutritional date, a moderate to severe malnutrition was observed in 79% of DM-I patients, 50.4% of all non diabetics and only in 30.6% of patients included in the DM-II group. However, DM-II patients present hypertrigliceridemia and a decrease in HDL cholesterol and apolipoprotein A levels with a high atherogenic index. Significantly higher rates of associated pathology were observed among both types of diabetic patients than their control groups and especially referred to cardiovascular and neurological diseases.
Conclusions: In conclusion, diabetes mellitus is an increasing incidence pathology in hemodialysis programs, that is associated to a higher morbi-mortality because vascular disease. Undernutrition is the main factor in DM-II whereas hyperlipidemia is in DM-II.