Identifying risk factor targets across different life stages to reduce complication risk in women living with type 1 diabetes
Description: In type 1 diabetes, the relationships between clinical risk factors, such as blood glucose, cholesterol, and blood pressure, and risk of complications like heart, kidney, eye, and nerve disease may be different in women and men. Women’s reproductive health factors such as pregnancy and menopause could at least partly explain those differences. Additionally, the effects of treatments differ by sex in type 1 diabetes such that women need more intensive insulin, cholesterol, and blood pressure therapies to reach the same risk factor levels as men. There is a critical need to study people with type 1 diabetes over the entire life course to improve understanding complication risk factors that change across different life stages in women so that treatments can be optimally administered. This study will address that need using two approaches: 1) Identify sex-specific relationships between risk factor patterns and complication risk over 32 years by looking separately in women and men from a US cohort of childhood onset type 1 diabetes, the Pittsburgh Epidemiology of Diabetes Complications (EDC) study and 2) Use EDC data to better understand how reproductive factors and risk factor treatments, such as insulin therapy and medications, affect long-term complication risk in women with type 1 diabetes. This study aims to determine if there are certain life stages during which specific risk factors are particularly important to complication risk in women with type 1 diabetes. The results will provide important information to improve timing of treatments to reduce women’s complication risk across the lifespan.
Funder: American Diabetes Association
Funding type: research
Funder scheme: Clinical
Start date: 2023-07-01
End date: 2026-06-30
Investigators: Rachel G Miller, Rachel G Miller
Institution: University of Pittsburgh
Funded outputs count: 2
Funder award ID: 7-23-ICTSWH-19
OpenAlex ID: G1291855987