Development and multi-cohort validation of a clinical score for predicting type 2 diabetes mellitus

Background and aimsMany countries lack resources to identify patients at risk of developing Type 2 diabetes mellitus (diabetes). We aimed to develop and validate a diabetes risk score based on easily accessible clinical data.MethodsProspective study including 5277 participants (55.0% women, 51.8±10.5 years) free of diabetes at baseline. Comparison with two other published diabetes risk scores (Balkau and Kahn clinical, respectively 5 and 8 variables) and validation on three cohorts (Europe, Iran and Mexico) was performed.ResultsAfter a mean follow-up of 10.9 years, 405 participants (7.7%) developed diabetes. Our score was based on age, gender, waist circumference, diabetes family history, hypertension and physical activity. The area under the curve (AUC) was 0.772 for our score, vs. 0.748 (pConclusionOur clinically-based score shows encouraging results compared to other scores and can be used in populations with differing diabetes prevalence.