Background: In Asian population, diabetes mellitus is increasing and has become an important health problem in recent decades. In Iran, cardiovascular disease (CVD) accounts for nearly 46% of the total costs spent for diabetes-associated diseases. Because individuals with diabetes have highly increased CVD risk compared with normal individuals, it is important to diagnosis factors that may increase CVD risk in diabetic patients. The study objective was to identify predictors associated with CVD mortality in patients with type 2 diabetes (T2D) and to develop a prediction model for cardiovascular (CV)-death using a competing risk approach.
Materials and methods: The study population consisted of 2638 T2D (male = 1110, female = 1528) patients aged ≥35 years attending from Endocrine and Metabolism Research Center in Isfahan for a mean follow-up period of 12 years; predictors for different cause of death were evaluated using cause specific Cox proportional and subdistribution hazards models.
Results: Based on competing modeling, the increase in blood pressure (BP) (spontaneously hypertensive rats [SHR]: 1.64), cholesterol (SHR: 1.55), and duration of diabetes (SHR: 2.03) were associated with CVD-death. Also, the increase in BP (SHR: 1.85), fasting blood sugar (SHR: 2.94), and duration of diabetes (SHR: 1.68) were associated with other death (consist of cerebrovascular accidents, cancer, infection, and diabetic nephropathy).
Conclusions: This finding suggests that more attention should be paid to the management of CV risk in type 2 diabetic patients with high cholesterol, high BP, and long diabetes duration.
Keywords: Cardiovascular disease; cause-specific hazard model; competing risks; subdistribution hazard model; type 2 diabetes.