Impact of type 2 diabetes on left ventricular geometry and diastolic function in hypertensive patients with chronic kidney disease

Left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) and diastolic dysfunction are very common in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD). Aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of type 2 diabetes on LV geometry and diastolic function in hypertensive patients with CKD. We enrolled 288 Caucasian subjects with hypertension and CKD; of them, 112 had diabetes. Patients with cardiovascular (CV) diseases, glomerular filtration rate (GFR) >60 ml min −1 per 1.73 m 2 , dialysis treatment and other major non-CV diseases were excluded. All patients underwent routine biochemical analyses and echocardiographic examination with tissue Doppler imaging (TDI). Patients with diabetes had significantly higher LV wall thicknesses ( P =0.0001), relative wall thickness (RWT) ( P =0.0001) and left atrium volume index ( P =0.03), when compared with patients without diabetes. Further, diabetic patients had very high prevalence of concentric LVH. Em, evaluated by TDI, was significantly lower in patients with diabetes ( P =0.005). However, the difference lost statistical significance after correction by analysis of covariance for RWT. Multiple stepwise linear regression analysis showed that the variables independently associated with Em were: age (β 0.364; P =0.0001), GFR (beta 0.101; P =0.019), and the presence of diabetes (β 0.166; P =0.002). Our study showed that in hypertensive patients with CKD the presence of diabetes is associated with increased LV-wall thicknesses and concentric geometry; further, diabetes together with renal function (GFR) is associated with worse diastolic function, independently of potential confounders, such as age, gender, body mass index and blood pressure.