Concordance in incidence of diabetes among persons with prediabetes detected using either oral glucose tolerance test or glycated haemoglobin.

AIMS

To study the concordance in the incidence of type 2 diabetes (T2DM) between cohorts with prediabetes, selected either by oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) or glycosylated haemoglobin (HbA1c) at two years in a real world situation.

METHODS

Two cohorts with impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) were selected from the non-interventional arm of the Indian diabetes prevention programmes; a group selected by using OGTT (Cohort 1, n = 498), another selected based on the HbA1c criterion (Cohort 2, n = 504). Clinical and biochemical data collected for 24 months at 6 monthly intervals were used in assessing the cumulative incidence of T2DM using the respective diagnostic criteria. Intra and inter group comparisons were analysed using appropriate statistical tests. A multiple logistic regression analysis was used to identify the variables significantly associated with the incidence of diabetes.

RESULTS

Incidence of diabetes in both cohorts were similar at 12 and 24 months with either of the two criteria (25.3% with glucose and 27.5% with HbA1c, p = 0.41 at 24 months). The multivariate analysis confirmed the results. Only baseline waist circumference was positively associated with the incidence.

CONCLUSION

Both OGTT and HbA1c have similar utility and validity in identifying persons with IGT. Persons identified with either of the criterion had similar incidence of T2DM among Asian Indians.