If your spouse has diabetes there is a chance you have it or will develop it too

There is potentially a 26% increase in the risk of developing type 2 diabetes if your spouse also has type 2 diabetes, as revealed in a systematic review and meta-analysis published in open access journal BMC Medicine. This information can help improve diabetes detection and motivate couples to work together to reduce the risk of developing the condition.

Type 2 diabetes can develop if a relative has the condition or if an individual has an unhealthy lifestyle. It is well established that if one of your parents has type 2 diabetes, your risk of developing it is increased due to genetic factors. To date, little work has been done to identify the risks for spouses, who are not biologically related, even though lifestyle also influences risk of developing diabetes.

The results of six previous studies, which totalled 75,498 couples, were analyzed by researchers from the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre in Montreal. The risk of spousal concordance for diabetes were compared in six studies, which looked at key outcomes such as age (risk increases with age), socioeconomic status and the way in which diabetes was diagnosed. The results of the pooled analysis found a spousal history of diabetes is associated with a 26% increase in the risk of developing diabetes. While most studies relied on health records or study participant reporting of a physician diagnosis of diabetes, the studies that performed their own blood tests (and therefore picked up undiagnosed diabetes) suggest that diabetes risk doubles if your partner has diabetes.

The researchers believe that the risk stems from what they call 'social clustering'. Although spouses are genetically unrelated, they generally share common living environments, social habits, eating patterns and physical activity levels, which can all be linked to developing type 2 diabetes. The researchers also hypothesize that this could this could be due 'assortative mating', whereby individuals select partners with similar traits to themselves.

Kaberi Dasgupta, senior author of the study, says: "When we talk about family history of type 2 diabetes, we generally assume that the risk increase that clusters in families results from genetic factors. What our analyses demonstrate is that risk is shared by spouses. This underscores the effects of shared environments, attitudes, and behaviours, which presumably underlie the shared risk. Our results are not the finding of a single study but rather a synthesis of the existing studies."

The researchers note a limitation of their study is that is does not account for the accuracy of the individual studies they analyzed. Two of the studies analysed did not indicate if they looked at type 1 or type 2 diabetes, the authors presumed this to be type 2 because 95% of incidences of diabetes are type 2.

Speaking about future implications, Kaberi Dasgupta says: "Future studies need to strengthen the understanding of shared couple risk further. For example, interventions that seek to lower diabetes risk by addressing eating and physical activity behaviours and home food environments could potentially be strengthened by strategies that engage both partners." 

 

Source: Wawa-news