Because patients with diabetes mellitus are at increased risk for vascular disease, we suspected that they might have increased circulating platelet aggregates. Therefore, we determined the platelet aggregate ratio of 30 diabetic patients (15 diagnosed before 30 years of age and classified as juvenile-onset and 15 diagnosed after 30 years of age and classified as adult-onset) and 30¹ controls. The mean platelet aggregate ratio of the juvenile-onset diabetics was 0.75 and of their controls was 0.91 (p < 0.02) confirming our hypothesis in this subgroup. However, the mean platelet aggregate ratio of the adult-onset diabetics was not lower than that of their controls.

No abstract