Primary prevention of cardiovascular diseases in diabetes mellitus: 2020 strategy

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a major cause of death among patients with diabetes. Antiplatelet therapy is an important part of the treatment and prevention of CVD and acetylsalicylic acid (ASA) is the main medication. This review describes modern approaches to the primary prevention of cardiovascular events in patients with diabetes. Until now, no concerted strategy on this issue has been developed by the global medical communities. The approaches used in the guidelines were heterogeneous and did not cover most of the risk factors, which were often associated with the underlying disease. The risk assessment for CVD with a view to developing risk factor stratification is often difficult due to the variety of manifestations and complications of the disease, as well as the specificity of factors used as independent predictors of atherosclerotic vascular disease for the diabetes population. Only cardiovascular risk analysis in an individual patient can make it possible to choose the best method for prevention. Therefore, the most important objective is to introduce the adopted CVD risk stratification criteria for patients with diabetes into clinical practice, which will enhance the preventive treatment and personalize the therapeutic approaches.

The adopted standardized cardiovascular risk analysis system for patients with diabetes, for now, has been implemented in the 2019 European clinical guidelines.

The consensus regarding use of ASA adopted by the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) in collaboration with the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) in 2019 has been based on meta-analyses with a high degree of evidence. They advise to use low-dose ASA in patients with diabetes, if they are at «high» and «very high» risk of CVD and have no obvious contraindications.

It allowed clinicians to use low-dose ASA (in combination with proton pump inhibitors) as one of the most important methods for primary prevention. Such modern approaches will surely improve the cardiovascular morbidity and mortality rates in the diabetes population.

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