Correlation Between Blood Urea Nitrogen and Short- and Long-Term Glycemic Variability in Elderly Patients with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus Who Were hospitalized:A Retrospective Study

Lining Huang; Zhaoxiang Wang; Ying Pan; Kaixin Zhou; Shao Zhong

doi:10.2147/DMSO.S458084

Correlation Between Blood Urea Nitrogen and Short- and Long-Term Glycemic Variability in Elderly Patients with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus Who Were hospitalized:A Retrospective Study

Diabetes Metab Syndr Obes. 2024 May 8:17:1973-1986. doi: 10.2147/DMSO.S458084. eCollection 2024.

Authors

Lining Huang¹, Zhaoxiang Wang¹, Ying Pan¹, Kaixin Zhou², Shao Zhong¹

Affiliations

¹ Gusu School, Nanjing Medical University, the First People's Hospital of Kunshan, Kunshan, 215300, People's Republic of China.
² Guangzhou Laboratory, Guangzhou, 510005, People's Republic of China.

Abstract

Objective: Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is a metabolic disease characterized by insulin resistance and progressively impaired insulin secretion resulting in dynamic fluctuations in glucose levels.High blood urea nitrogen (BUN) levels have been linked to decreased insulin sensitivity, suppressed insulin synthesis and increased risk of incident diabetes mellitus in humans as well as insulin use in patients with T2DM.This study characterize the association between BUN levels and short-term and long-term glycemic variability(GV) in the elderly patients with T2DM who were hospitalized.

Methods: A total of 927 elderly patients with T2DM were included in the study. The short-term GV was quantified using parameters such as standard deviation (SD), coefficient of variation (CV), time in range (TIR), and mean amplitude of glycemic excursions (MAGE), based on multi-point fingertip blood glucose monitoring. The long-term GV was quantified using parameters such as SD, CV, variation independent of the mean (VIM), and average successive variability (ARV), based on fasting blood glucose(FPG). The relationship between BUN levels and short-term and long-term GV in elderly T2DM who were hospitalized was explored using methods such as Spearman correlation coefficient, linear regression analysis, logistic regression analysis, and interaction tests.

Results: In elderly patients with T2DM were hospitalized, there is a significant correlation between BUN levels and both short-term and long-term GV. BUN is negatively correlated with the GV parameter TIR (r=-0.12, P=0.000), and positively correlated with SD (r=0.12, P=0.000), CV (r=0.07, P=0.026), MAGE (r=0.11, P=0.001), FPG-SD (r=0.08, P=0.013), and FPG-CV (r=0.08, P=0.014).Furthermore, the association remains consistent across different age, gender, BMI, and haemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) subgroups (P interaction > 0.05).

Conclusion: In elderly patients with T2DM were hospitalized, BUN levels were positively associated with GV.Therefore, monitoring BUN levels were beneficial in assessing the degree of GV.

Keywords: diabetes mellitus; glycemic variability; glycemic variability parameters; vascular lesions of diabetes mellitus.

Grants and funding

This work was supported by Suzhou Science and Technology Projects (Nos: SLT2021006 and SKY2022025).