Heart disease and stroke are the leading causes of death and disability in people who suffer from diabetes. Lowering the risk, even with medications, has proved challenging.

Diabetes affects blood glucose levels. Regulating glucose is how the disease has traditionally been treated.

But it also causes inflammation.

A Spanish research team presented a study at the American Heart Association’s High Blood Pressure Research Scientific Sessions that offered evidence that fighting inflammation might be the best way to tackle diabetes and heart disease.

The researchers used cells from a human aorta (the main trunk of the coronary arteries) to show that when glucose was inserted into normal cells, or those treated with an anti-inflammatory medication, no problems resulted.

However, when they inserted glucose in the presence of inflammation-stimulating proteins, the cells were unable to respond, and damage resulted.

Another study showed the impact on the heart of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), a classification that includes Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis.

We know that these conditions increase heart attack and stroke risk, but this 2014 study discovered that they aggravate congestive heart failure as well.

At the 2014 Heart Failure Congress, a Danish team presented a large study that found that the frequency of hospitalizations for heart failure rose in people with IBD.

The researchers looked at 23,681 individuals who developed IBD between 1997 and 2011. Of those subjects, 553 were hospitalized with heart failure during the follow-up period.

Rates of hospitalization for heart failure were then compared between the IBD group and the remaining Danish population (about 5.5 million people), and adjusted for age and sex differences.

The researchers found that patients with new-onset IBD had a 37 percent higher risk of hospitalization for heart failure, and the risk more than doubled during IBD flare-ups.