UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa., May 22 (UPI) -- Researchers have concluded after a four-year study that a faster resting heart rate could be used to identify people with the potential to develop pre-diabetes and diabetes.
At the beginning of the study, researchers measured the heart rates of 73,357 Chinese adults, excluding those who had diabetes at the outset in 2006. During follow-up exams over the following four years, including glucose tests every two years, 17,463 prediabetic patients were identified and 4,649 had developed diabetes.
"We found participants with faster heart rates, suggesting lower automatic function, had increased risk of diabetes, pre-diabetes, and conversion from pre-diabetes to diabetes," said Xiang Gao, an associate professor of nutritional sciences at Penn State, in a press release. "Each additional 10 beats per minute was associated with 23 percent increased risk of diabetes."
All 73,357 were employees of a coal mining company in China, however researchers combined the resulting data with that from seven previously published studies to bring the total number of subjects included in the test to 97,653 men and women. Data on these additional individuals showed similar occurrence rates as the researchers' own study.
"This suggests that faster heart rate could be a novel pre-clinical marker or risk factor for diabetes," Gao said.
The study is published in the International Journal of Epidemiology. Related UPI Stories
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