The health stage of cardiovascular-kidney-metabolic (CKM) syndrome is useful for predicting all-cause mortality in patients with type 2 diabetes: a cohort study in a period prior to the standard use of recent pharmacotherapy.

AIM

Cardiovascular-kidney-metabolic (CKM) syndrome is a recently defined systemic condition linking cardiovascular disease, chronic kidney disease and metabolic disorders including type 2 diabetes (T2D). Although the CKM staging has been proposed for integrated risk assessment, its association with all-cause mortality in patients with T2D remains unclear. We investigated the prognosis in patients with T2D assigned by the CKM health stage.

METHODS

A total of 632 Japanese patients with T2D were enrolled. The primary endpoint was all-cause death.

RESULTS

The numbers of the recruited patients with stages 2, 3 and 4 were 353 (55.9 %), 116 (18.3 %) and 163 (25.8 %), respectively. During a median follow-up of 64 months (35,327 person-months), 62 patients (9.8 %) died. Kaplan-Meier survival curves analysis showed significant differences in cumulative mortality among CKM health stages (log-rank test: P < 0.001) with higher cumulative mortality in stages 3 and 4 than in stage 2. Multivariable Cox proportional hazard models after adjustment of age, sex, body mass index, current smoking habit, cancer, relevant medications and hemoglobin A1c showed that adjusted hazard ratios (HRs) [95 % confidence intervals] for all-cause death were significantly higher in patients with stages 3 (2.25[1.08-4.69]) and those with stage 4 (2.87[1.41-5.84]) than in those with stage 2 as the reference. After additional adjustment of N-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide and estimated glomerular filtration rate among definition criteria for staging, the association of stages with all-cause death remained statistically significant in only stage 4 (2.16[1.02-4.56]).

CONCLUSION

The CKM health staging is useful for predicting all-cause mortality in Japanese patients with T2D.