Higher Heart Rate Signals Later Diabetes Risk

Middle-aged people with a higher-than-normal heart rate while at rest run the risk of developing diabetes later in life, and even dying from diabetes, researchers report.

"Heart rate is a simple-to-measure clinical tool that provides potentially useful information about an individual’s metabolic health,"  states Dr. Mercedes R. Carnethon. Generally, people with a relatively low heart rate while at rest are fitter and healthier.

Carnethon, at Northwestern University in Chicago, and her colleagues noted the apparent association between heart rate and life expectancy, so they set out to see if heart rate might also have a connection with diabetes and mortality from the disease.

The researchers examined data on nearly 15,000 people in whom resting heart rate had been measured sometime between 1967 and 1973, as part of the Chicago Heart Association Detection Project in Industry. The subjects were aged 35 to 64 years at the time, and free of diabetes.

Subsequently, after the age of 65, 1,877 participants had diabetes-related hospital claims and 410 had death certificates that mentioned diabetes, the team reports in the journal Diabetes Care.

They calculate that the likelihood of having diabetes increased by 10 percent for every 12 beats-per-minute increase in resting heart rate.

After factoring in the subjects’ body mass index, however, resting heart rate remained a significant risk factor for later diabetes only in subjects who were aged 35 to 49 at the time they enrolled in the study.
Summing up, the researchers conclude, "Our findings provide further evidence that higher heart rate is associated with adverse morbidity and mortality from a number of causes including diabetes."

Diabetes Care, February 2008.