Validation of the Swedish diabetes regrouping scheme in adult-onset diabetes in China

Abstract

Background  Re-classification of diabetes is vital in providing precise management and reducing risk of diabetes complications. This study aimed to validate the practicality of the Swedish diabetes re-grouping scheme in Chinese adults with newly diagnosed diabetes. We conducted a cross-sectional survey of 15772 patients with adult-onset newly-diagnosed diabetes in China from April 2015 to October 2017. Cluster analysis used by the Swedish study was employed to re-group our patients. Glutamate decarboxylase antibodies (GADA), age onset, body mass index (BMI), Hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c), homoeostatic model assessment 2 estimates of β-cell function (HOMA2-B) and insulin resistance (HOMA2-IR) were used to perform the TwoStep and k-means clustering. Characteristics of the clusters were compared between the patients from this study and those from the Swedish study.

Results Our patients clustered into five subgroups: 6.2% were gathered in the severe autoimmune diabetes (SAID) subgro...