There is evidence of a close relationship between diabetes mellitus and disorders of the insertions of tendons, ligaments and articular capsules into bone (enthesopathies). It has been suggested that these disorders may represent genuine complications of diabetes. We therefore conducted a study to determine whether insertion disorders at the calcaneum (calcaneal spurs) represent a complication of non-insulin-dependent diabetes.
The incidence of calcaneal spurs was studied in a group of 100 patients with non-insulin-dependent diabetes in comparison to 100 sex- and age-matched controls. Patients with disorders involving hyperostosis were excluded.
Calcaneal insertion disorders were found to be more common among the diabetics than among the controls. These disorders, however, were also associated with other factors such as the body mass index and age. Discriminant analysis, which would have in theory highlighted any relationship between diabetes and insertion disorders at the calcaneum, did not show definitively that these disorders were a complication of diabetes.
These results suggest that enthesopathies are not a complication of diabetes mellitus, and we would suggest that this conclusion may be extended to the relationship between diabetes and insertion disorders at other joints.