In contrast with the late and relatively infrequent appearance of clinical endpoints of microangiopathy, macrovascular complications (i.e., coronary heart disease and peripheral vascular disease) are responsible for the overwhelming majority of the mortality, morbidity and treatment costs in the American population of type 2 diabetics, even more so in the older VA diabetic population. In the recently concluded United Kingdom Prospective Diabetes Study (UKPDS) on type 2 DM, macrovascular mortality was 70 times higher than that of microvascular mortality. Intervention studies to determine the effect of rigorous glycemic control on these macrovascular events are inconclusive and contradictory. Intensive treatment in patients who are newly diagnosed has failed to demonstrate a beneficial effect of tight control on cardiovascular complications. The few studies conducted in later stages of the disease (i.e., in patients requiring insulin treatment, alone or in combination with oral agents) have been conflicting and indeterminate.