Erectile dysfunction in diabetic predicts the appearance of heart disease
The Endocrinology and Cardiology Services of the Doctor Peset University Hospital and the Foundation for Research at the Doctor Peset University Hospital have established a clear relationship between erectile dysfunction in patients with type 2 diabetes and a higher risk of cardiovascular pathology.
This relationship, detected after conducting a study with 154 patients with type 2 diabetes who had no antecedent in their cardiovascular episode history, proves the validity of erectile dysfunction as a risk marker of coronary pathology in diabetics.The conclusions of the study have just been published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine.
"The appearance of erectile dysfunction in a patient with diabetes, whatever their age, is indicating that endothelium (layer that covers the arteries) has been altered), which prevents the correct vascularization of the cavernous bodies of the penis.With our study we have verified that this disorder is a good predictor of a future deterioration of the arteries at a general level and, therefore, it is the first sign for the patient to be controlled and the relevant tests are performed to avoid a heart attack, a strokeOr any other type of vascular accident, "explains Dr. Antonio Hernández Mijares, head of the Endocrinology Service of the Doctor Peset University Hospital.
Traditionally, the relationship between erectile dysfunction and ischemic heart disease was well established, since it is known that almost half of men with erectile dysfunction have previously had a myocardial infarction.What had not been studied to date was the prevalence of silent ischemic heart disease (not diagnosed) in diabetic patients without a history of cardiovascular pathology and its relationship with erectile dysfunction as the first sign of the presence of arterial damage.
Risk four times higher
To carry out the study, participants were divided into two groups: diabetics with erectile dysfunction and diabetic without erectile dysfunction."Our first surprise was already verified that a high percentage of diabetics had this alteration, since 68.2% of the participants in the study had erectile dysfunction, 46.7% of them in a severe degree," says theDoctor Hernández.
Then different tests were performed (electrocardiogram, echocardiography, monitoring with holter and effort tests) to diagnose possible coronary damage (arteriosclerosis or hardening of the arteries that hinders blood flow).In those patients in which some kind of affectation was detected, cardiac angiographs and catheterization to solve the problems when necessary.
"In all cases we were facing patients without symptoms of cardiac pathology and that they did not know that their arteries were damaged. What united them was that the vast majority of those affected belonged to the group with erectile dysfunction," says the head of the endocrinology serviceof the Doctor Peset University Hospital.
In fact, the study concluded that patients with type 2 diabetes who also had erectile dysfunction in different degrees had four times more silent ischemic heart disease (not previously diagnosed with research) than those patients with type diabetes type2 without erectile dysfunction.
Specifically, silent ischemic heart disease was diagnosed in 18.1% of diabetics with erectile dysfunction, compared to 4.1% in the group without this sexual disorder."Only two of the patients in whom we detected cardiac pathology had no erection problems, in the rest there was some degree of sexual disorder. Like the rest of the parameters studied (hypertension, diseasePeripheral vascular, cholesterol?) did not present significant differences between the two groups, we have to point to erectile dysfunction as a predictor of this vascular damage, "says Dr. Hernández.
Thus, endothelial dysfunction that characterizes this sexual disorder, is also the main marker of generalized vascular damage."In the penis, endothelial dysfunction is clinically evident much before other areas because only endothelium alteration is sufficient to cause erectile dysfunction. This places erectile dysfunction as a valid marker of a subsequent development of cardiovascular disease in diabetics,", concludes the study conducted by researchers from the Doctor Peset University Hospital and its Foundation.
