Young-onset diabetes amplifies the effect of diabetes duration on CKD risk: Study

China: The positive association between diabetes duration and risk of chronic kidney disease (CKD) gets amplified in people with diabetes diagnosis at a young age, a recent study has found. The study is published in the journal Diabetologia.

Type 2 diabetes is a chronic condition in which the body is not able to efficiently utilize insulin hormone. According to data from WHO, the worldwide prevalence of diabetes has increased from 108 million in 1980 to 422 million in 2014. Diabetes is the leading cause of kidney failure, accounting for 44% percent of new cases.

Andrea O. Y. Luk, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Special Administrative Region, People's Republic of China, and colleagues postulated that increased lifetime risk of CKD in young-onset diabetes is attributable to both more aggressive disease and long disease duration. They examined if age at diabetes diagnosis changes the effect of diabetes duration on CKD risk. 

For this purpose, the researchers included 436,744 people with incident type 2 diabetes in the Hong Kong Diabetes Surveillance Database (HKDSD) and 16,979 people with prevalent type 2 diabetes in the Hong Kong Diabetes Register (HKDR). Using Poisson models, they described joint effects of age at diabetes diagnosis, diabetes duration, and attained age on incidence of CKD in HKDSD. Interaction effect of age at diabetes diagnosis and diabetes duration on risk of CKD were also examined with adjustment for confounders in HKDR.