Objective: The prevalence of unknown impaired fasting glucose (IFG), impaired glucose tolerance (IGT), or type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is high. Numerous studies demonstrated that IFG, IGT, or T2DM are associated with increased cardiovascular risk, therefore an improved identification strategy would be desirable. The objective of this study was to create a simple and reliable tool to identify individuals with impaired glucose metabolism (IGM). Design and methods: A cohort of 1737 individuals (1055 controls, 682 with previously unknown IGM) was screened by 75 g oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT). Supervised machine learning was used to automatically generate decision trees to identify individuals with IGM. To evaluate the accuracy of identification, a tenfold cross-validation was performed. Resulting trees were subsequently re-evaluated in a second, independent cohort of 1998 individuals (1253 controls, 745 unknown IGM). Results: A clinical decision tree included age and systolic blood pressure (sensitivity 89.3%, specificity 37.4%, and positive predictive value (PPV) 48.0%), while a tree based on clinical and laboratory data included fasting glucose and systolic blood pressure (sensitivity 89.7%, specificity 54.6%, and PPV 56.2%). The inclusion of additional parameters did not improve test quality. The external validation approach confirmed the presented decision trees. Conclusion: We proposed a simple tool to identify individuals with existing IGM. From a practical perspective, fasting blood glucose and blood pressure measurements should be regularly measured in all individuals presenting in outpatient clinics. An OGTT appears to be useful only if the subjects are older than 48 years or show abnormalities in fasting glucose or blood pressure.
BackgroundHigh blood glucose and diabetes are amongst the conditions causing the greatest losses in years of healthy life worldwide. Therefore, numerous studies aim to identify reliable risk markers for development of impaired glucose metabolism and type 2 diabetes. However, the molecular basis of impaired glucose metabolism is so far insufficiently understood. The development of so called 'omics' approaches in the recent years promises to identify molecular markers and to further understand the molecular basis of impaired glucose metabolism and type 2 diabetes. Although univariate statistical approaches are often applied, we demonstrate here that the application of multivariate statistical approaches is highly recommended to fully capture the complexity of data gained using high-throughput methods.MethodsWe took blood plasma samples from 172 subjects who participated in the prospective Metabolic Syndrome Berlin Potsdam follow-up study (MESY-BEPO Follow-up). We analysed these samples using Gas Chromatography coupled with Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS), and measured 286 metabolites. Furthermore, fasting glucose levels were measured using standard methods at baseline, and after an average of six years. We did correlation analysis and built linear regression models as well as Random Forest regression models to identify metabolites that predict the development of fasting glucose in our cohort.ResultsWe found a metabolic pattern consisting of nine metabolites that predicted fasting glucose development with an accuracy of 0.47 in tenfold cross-validation using Random Forest regression. We also showed that adding established risk markers did not improve the model accuracy. However, external validation is eventually desirable. Although not all metabolites belonging to the final pattern are identified yet, the pattern directs attention to amino acid metabolism, energy metabolism and redox homeostasis.ConclusionsWe demonstrate that metabolites identified using a high-throughput method (GC-MS) perform well in predicting the development of fasting plasma glucose over several years. Notably, not single, but a complex pattern of metabolites propels the prediction and therefore reflects the complexity of the underlying molecular mechanisms. This result could only be captured by application of multivariate statistical approaches. Therefore, we highly recommend the usage of statistical methods that seize the complexity of the information given by high-throughput methods.
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