Blood and body measures offer modest gains in predicting death
No measure consistently performed best in a cohort of 56,182 older adults with type 2 diabetes followed for a median 5.56 years.
Dose-response
Limit: Prediction accuracy in an independent validation cohort was not measured
Edited by Boris Djordjevic · AgingResearch.News
In a community-based cohort study, researchers followed 56,182 older adults with type 2 diabetes who participated in the Wuhan Elderly Health Management Program in 2018. They compared five measures based on blood sugar and triglycerides, a type of blood fat, with or without body measurements. They tracked deaths through January 26, 2024.
During a median 5.56 years, 9,236 participants died, including 4,126 from cardiovascular causes. One combined blood-and-body measure had the most consistent association with higher mortality. Across all five measures, death risk generally fell toward an intermediate minimum and then rose. The associations also changed over time. No measure consistently performed best across prediction tests, and overall improvements in distinguishing mortality risk were small.
Why it matters
For older adults with type 2 diabetes, the study addressed whether routine blood and body measurements could help community programs assess future mortality risk.
Caveats
This observational study could not establish cause and effect. The findings came from older adults with type 2 diabetes in one community-based program and require validation in other populations.
The paper
Wuhan University
Cardiovascular Diabetology, Oct 23, 2026, Open access, CC BY-NC-ND
