The Effects of Alcohol Consumption in People with Diabetes Mellitus:

Methods The electronic case records of total of 7,418 diabetic patients who were seen in the diabetes clinic at St Thomas’ Hospital between 1979 and 1998 were selected for this study. All of these patients were registered with a standardised structured ‘First Visit’ history and examination on a computerised diabetes clinical records system – Diabeta and had a mean of 12 years of follow-up. The baseline data, such as age, race, sex, alcohol consumption, smoking history, type of diabetes, Body Mass Index (BMI), blood pressure (BP), HbA1, Vibration Perception Threshold (VPT) for the ankle and toe and history of diabetes complications (e.g. stroke, myocardial infarction, angina, retinopathy, peripheral neuropathy, protein in the urine and amputation etc,) were recorded in a coded form. A multiple regression test was applied to identify the association between stated alcohol consumption and diabetes control/complications with consideration of confounding factors.