Diabetes mellitus is an important factor associated with increased cardiovascular morbidity and mortality, due to coronary artery disease (CAD), stroke and peripheral vascular disease. Age adjusted coronary artery disease prevalence in diabetic patients, in the United States, is between 30 and 51%; peripheral vascular disease and stroke prevalences are 9 and 10%, respectively 1 . Recently, a study in Brazil reported a 2.3 greater in-hospital mortality rate in diabetic compared with nondiabetic patients, and the main cause of death was cardiovascular disease 2 .Today, it is recognized that the presence of microalbuminuria, in addition to being a marker of incipient renal disease in diabetic patients, seems to be also a marker of large vessel disease, and is associated with an increased cardiovascular disease mortality, especially coronary heart disease 3-5 . This increased mortality is due, in part, to a greater prevalence of other risk factors in patients with microalbuminuria, such as lipid disorders, hypertension (H), increased fibrinogen levels and blood rheology changes 6,7 . Recent studies from the World Health Organization demonstrated that the presence of proteinuria, in type 2 diabetic patients (DM2), increased the risk of cardiovascular death 3 to 4 times, independent of other risk factors 8 .The presence of microalbuminuria possibly reflects the process of generalized vascular damage, affecting simultaneously glomeruli, the retina and the intimal layer of large vessels. This has been demonstrated by studies of markers of endothelial dysfunction and measurements of transcapillary protein leakage 9,10 .Some studies suggested a common genetic predisposition for microalbuminuria and the early atherosclerotic process in diabetic patients 11 . Others suggested that glomerular mesangeal cells and arterial smooth muscle cells, being both of mesenchimal origin, would suffer the same changes in response to the different metabolic abnormalities observed in these patients, such as functional extracellular matrix changes with the consequent mesangial and medial proliferation, endothelial dysfunction and protein leakage 9 .The present study aimed to analyze the association between coronary artery disease, incipient diabetic renal