Introduction: advances in the prevention of cardiovascular disease in patients with diabetes.

In France and Italy, as in the rest of the world, the epidemic of diabetes is gathering pace [1]. In these pages, Zannad and Agabiti-Rosei [2] document the profile of patients with type 2 diabetes in these two countries and confirm the frequent co-existence of diabetes, raised blood pressure, and elevated cholesterol. They also confirm the wide gap between recommended targets for blood pressure, blood glucose and cholesterol and the levels actually achieved in clinical practice [2]. In turn they describe data from the ‘Forlife’ study in Italy [3] and the ‘Phenomen’ study in France [4], documenting the high levels of both microvascular and macrovascular disease. Between one quarter and one third of patients with type 2 diabetes have well-documented renal disease and similar proportions have experienced a coronary event [2–4]. These findings have recently been confirmed in another Italian survey, the IPERDIA study [5], showing that type 2 diabetes is three times more prevalent among individuals with hypertension than in the general population and is associated with a high prevalence of cardiovascular disorders.