Diabetes and Hypertension-effects of this deadly duo on health
In my last post, I discussed how diabetes and hypertension, a deadly duo, caused a heart attack in one patient of mine. I also mentioned about investigations to be carried out. Today, we will learn about the interpretation and implications of abnormal laboratory tests.
The other parameter we look in Diabetes is HbA1c[gylcosylated hemoglobin]. This test reflects how well your diabetes or blood glucose is controlled over a period of say 3 months. The values and their significance is as given below:-
2]Lipid profile:-Now coming to Lipid profile–this is a test showing us the fats floating in our blood which is termed as Lipids or cholesterol. Lipids and their values are of different varieties as shown in the table below:-
3]Renal profile:- This test reveals the health of our kidneys. It is important to know that both diabetes and hypertension have an adverse effect on our kidneys, termed diabetic nephropathy and hypertensive nephropathy respectively. Kidneys have units called nephrons which contains blood filtering units called glomerulus. The pictures below will explain in short how the kidney works:-
Each glomerulus contains small blood vessels [capillaries] called afferent arteriole which brings impure blood to the kidney, gets the impurities filtered and the filtered blood leaves through the efferent arteriole. In diabetes and hypertension, the capillaries get damaged because of high blood sugar and high B.P.,causing impurities like urea,creatinine,uric acid, etc. to remain in the blood leading to a condition called uremia-in short the kidneys fail, hence called chronic renal failure or CKD[chronic kidney disease], leading to dialysis[artificial filtering of blood to remove the impurities]. Having known this, we would like to know the status of our kidneys and that we can know by blood tests called renal profile, the values of which are shown below.
I will discuss the effects of different parameters of these laboratory investigations in my next post. Till then if you have any queries, you may contact me personally on my email vasu56deva@gmail.com or leave a comment which I will be glad to reply personally.
