Associations of Type 2 Diabetes Onset Age With Cardiovascular Disease and Mortality: The Kailuan Study

OBJECTIVE We aimed to explore the associations between type 2 diabetes onset age and cardiovascular disease (CVD) and all-cause mortality in the Chinese population. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS This study included 101,080 participants free of prevalent diabetes and CVD at baseline from the Kailuan Study. All participants were monitored biennially until 31 December 2017. During follow-up, 11,384 participants were diagnosed as having type 2 diabetes. For each case subject, one control subject was randomly selected, matched for age (+/- 1 years) and sex. The final analysis comprised 10,777 case-control pairs. Weighted Cox regression models were used to evaluate the average hazard ratios (AHRs) and 95% CIs of incident CVD and all-cause mortality among patients with new-onset type 2 diabetes versus control subjects across age-groups. Results During a median follow-up of 5.57 years, 1,794 incident events (907 CVD events, of which there were 725 strokes and 887 deaths) occurred. After adjustment for potential confounders, participants with type 2 diabetes diagnosed at age <45 years had the highest relative risks of CVD and all-cause mortality relative to the matched control subjects, with AHRs of 3.21 (95% CI 1.18-8.72) for CVD, 2.99 (95% CI 1.01-9.17) for stroke, and 4.79 (95% CI 1.95-11.76) for all-cause mortality. The risks gradually attenuated with each decade increase in type 2 diabetes onset age. CONCLUSIONS The relative risks of CVD and all-cause mortality differed across type 2 diabetes onset age-groups, and the associations were more evident in younger-onset type 2 diabetes.