Framingham Study Insights on Diabetes and Cardiovascular Disease

study findings with more-robust 20-year data for esti-mating the relative risk of specified atherosclerotic car-diovascular events from prior diabetes. It prospectively compared the cardiovascular impact of diabetes in women vs men, revealing the greater vulnerability in women. The role of diabetes as a contributor to athero-sclerotic cardiovascular disease (CVD) was uncertain at the time of the report, with some doubting whether diabetes actually caused coronary disease. This and prior Framingham study reports confirmed prospec-tively in a general population sample the clinical obser-vations of medical practitioners—that their patients with diabetes had excessive occurrence of peripheral artery disease, coronary disease, and strokes. The re-port also highlighted the less appreciated fact of a hig