Pre-diabetes raises heart disease risk

Diabetes is dangerous even before the disease becomes full-blown, boosting the risk of death from heart disease in its earliest form, Australian researchers said last week.

Before most people develop Type 2 diabetes, they have trouble metabolizing sugar, a problem known as pre-diabetes that affects 56 million people in the United States.

Elizabeth Barr of the International Diabetes Institute in Melbourne, Australia and colleagues studied 10,429 Australians 25 or older for about five years. Patients were considered pre-diabetic if they had abnormal blood glucose levels after fasting.

These patients have a 2.5 times higher risk of death from heart problems than those who metabolized glucose normally, said the researchers, whose work was published in the journal Circulation.