The Presence of Diabetes Mellitus or Pre-diabetes Mellitus Increases Mortality from Heart Disease in a Taiwanese Population: A 10-year Follow-Up Study

We evaluated hyperglycemia-associated mortality in the Taiwanese population by conducting a 10-year retrospective cohort study. Methods: From 2007 to 2017, all participants, regardless of their age or underlying diseases, were identified at a Health Screening Center in Taiwan. Overall, 114,534 participants were included in the analysis. They were classified into three subgroups according to glycemia and smoking status by combining survival for data analysis. Results: The mean follow-up time, age, and body mass index (BMI) were 8.14 ± 2.22 years, 40.95 ± 12.14 years, and 23.24 ± 3.65 kg/m², respectively. The cumulative death rate increased from 0.9% in the normal fasting blood glucose(FBG) subgroup to approximately 6% in the diabetes FBG subgroup. After adjusting for age, gender, BMI, high-density lipoprotein, triglycerides, waist circumference(WC), and smoking status, the hazard ratio (HR) for all-cause, cancer, and heart disease mortality in the diabetes mellitus(DM) subgroup was 1.560, 1.381, and 1.828, respectively.HR was 0.989 in all-cause, 0.940 in cancer, and 1.326 in heart disease in the pre-DM subgroup.

Being tested for pre-DM is related to a higher risk of death from heart disease in the Taiwanese population at baseline. Therefore, cardiovascular risk must be actively measured among diabetes patients every visit.