A comparative study of coronary and contributory risk factors in rural and urban type 2 diabetics.

A prospective study of various coronary and contributory risk factors in urban and rural diabetic population is presented. For the coronary risk factors, smoking prevalence was high for urban diabetics (27%), also high TC levels (57%), and low levels of HDL cholesterol (17%) were comparatively greater in urban diabetics. Prevalence of hypertension was higher, (40%) in rural diabetics. High LDL levels were (>130mg/dl) were observed in 20% of rural subjects and 47% of urban diabetics. High TG levels (34%) were seen in rural diabetics. 54% of urban diabetics were centrally obese and 57% were obese from the rural study site. From this study, it was seen that, illiteracy percentage was found to be higher in rural subjects. Also, greater number of people (70%) were in inadequate status for the needed patient awareness. 77% of patients belonging to the rural study area were found to be unaware for the hypoglycaemia. Low patient compliance was seen in urban diabetics as compared to their rural counterparts, and 34% of patients belonging to both study sites were found to have no knowledge for diabetic complications. High total cholesterol was found to be the commonest lipid profile abnormality in this study. Second commonest lipid abnormality was high LDL levels. Low HDL cholesterol was found to be more commonly in patients of age > 60 years than <60 years (21.42% vs. 18.18%). More female patients were overweight and obese as compared to male (33.33% vs. 19.23%). A Large population of diabetics was found to have a sedentary lifestyle. Rural patients were progressing towards more coronary risk factors as compared to the urban ones, mainly with the lipid profile abnormalities. Although our type 2 diabetic patients share similar coronary risk factors as compared to diabetic patients from different countries, our type 2 patients have got high prevalence of hypertension. Male diabetics had high prevalence of smoking habits.