The most life-threatening consequences of diabetes are heart disease and stroke, which strike people with diabetes more than twice as often as they do others. Most of the cardiovascular complications related to diabetes have to do with the way the heart pumps blood through the body. Diabetes can change the chemical makeup of some of the substances found in the blood and this can cause blood vessels to narrow or to clog up completely. This is called atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries, and diabetes seems to speed it up.

Unfortunately, the risk of cardiovascular disease among people with diabetes is dramatic: a diagnosis of diabetes as an adult presents the same risk as already having one heart attack. More than 65 percent of deaths in diabetes patients are attributed to heart and vascular disease.

• Heart disease strikes people with diabetes, twice as often as people without diabetes.
  
• In people with diabetes, cardiovascular complications occur at an earlier age and often result in premature death.
  
• People with diabetes are two to four times more likely to suffer strokes and once having had a stroke, are two to four times as likely to have a recurrence.
  
• Deaths from heart disease in women with diabetes have increased 23 percent over the past 30 years compared to a 27 percent decrease in women without diabetes.
  
• Deaths from heart disease in men with diabetes have decreased by only 13 percent compared to a 36 percent decrease in men without diabetes.
  
• Blindness. Diabetes is the leading cause of new cases of blindness in people ages 20-74. Each year, from 12,000 to 24,000 people lose their sight because of diabetes.
  
• Kidney Disease. Diabetes is the leading cause of end-stage renal disease, accounting for about 43 percent of new cases. In 2000, approximately 41,046 people with diabetes initiated treatment for end stage renal disease (kidney failure), and 129,183 underwent dialysis or kidney transplantation.