Is hyperviscosity a treatable component of diabetic microcirculatory disease?

Blood viscosity at low shear-rates was significantly higher in sixty-four patients with longstanding diabetes than in sixty-one matched non-diabetic controls. This increase was most striking in patients with either proliferative retinopathy or nephropathy, although it was present to a lesser extent in diabetic patients with evidence of myocardial or peripheral ischaemia. Erythrocyte deformability was lower in the fourteen diabetic patients with the most extensive microangiopathy than in twenty-two diabetics with slight or no complications or in controls. Hyperviscosity and reduced erythrocyte deformability may well be important and potentially treatable factors in the aetiology or progression of microcirculatory disease is diabetes.