Diabetic dyslipidemia or ‘diabetes lipidus’?

Diabetes mellitus is one of the most important risk factors for cardiovascular diseases. The results of several studies have shown that achieving satisfactory glucoregulation results in a significant reduction in the incidence of microvascular and macrovascular complications, and cardiovascular mortality. However, the risk of the development of cardiovascular diseases is markedly increased in the presence of dyslipoproteinemia. Research has shown that hyperglycemia not only causes apoptosis of β-cells in the islets of Langerhans (glucotoxicity) but also determines the degree of accumulation of oxidized LDLs. On the other hand, dyslipoproteinemia itself has a toxic effect on β-cells, but only in the presence of increased blood glucose levels, thus increasing the risk of the development of cardiovascular diseases exponentially. As diabetes and the lipid metabolism disorder can be neither scrutinized nor treated separately, the authors query whether ‘diabetes lipidus’ would be a more appropriate term.