Is diabetes a predictor of worse outcome for spontaneous intracerebral hemorrhage?

Background and purpose: Diabetes is common in acute stroke and is associated with worse outcome in ischemic stroke, but its influence on intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) remains controversial. We examined the association between diabetes and clinical outcome in a large hospitalized population of Chinese patients with ICH. Methods: We prospectively enrolled patients with ICH who were admitted within 3 days of stroke onset from March 2002 to December 2010. Data were analyzed on demographic and clinical characteristics such as age, gender, vascular risk factors, Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) score at admission, site of hemorrhage and surgical treatment. Patient characteristics, functional outcome according to the modified Rankin scale (mRS) and mortality were compared between patients with and without diabetes. Results: Of the 1438 ICH patients included, 118 (8.2%) had diabetes and this subgroup showed a significantly higher proportion of hypertension (OR= 1.98,95% Cl 1.33-2.96, P= 0.001) and hyperlipidemia (OR= 3.22, 95% CI 1.16-8.89, P= 0.024). Patients were followed up for a mean of 147.48 +/- 3.59 days. Cox regression suggested that diabetes was not a significant predictor of mortality in our cohort (P> 0.05), and repeated-measures ANOVA showed that variance in mRS over the course of follow-up was similar between patients with and without diabetes (P= 0.463). Conclusion: Our data suggest that diabetes in Chinese patients with ICH is not associated with increased mortality or functional outcome. Future studies are needed to clarify possible confounders affecting prognosis after ICH. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.