Study links diabetes with mortality in chronic hemodialysis patients

Japan: Sarcopenic obesity is common in chronic hemodialysis patients. Diabetes was discovered to be a substantial and independent contributor to the existence of sarcopenic obesity, as well as a significant predictor of all-cause death, regardless of the current normal, obese, sarcopenia, and sarcopenic obesity groups. Eiji Ishimura and colleagues studied the relationship between diabetes and mortality in hemodialysis patients. In this retrospective cohort analysis, researchers controlled for obesity, sarcopenia, and sarcopenic obesity. The findings of this study were published in The Journal of Renal Nutrition on 28th August 2021.

From January 1997 to December 2005, researchers monitored 308 hemodialysis patients during a 76-month period. All patients received treatment in Japan. The patients' average age was 58 years. The average length of hemodialysis was 4.1 years. Sixty-one percent were men, and 32.8 percent had diabetes.

From the above study, it was seen that diabetes prevalence was considerably skewed across the four categories, with the sarcopenic obese group (54.2%) having a greater frequency than the others (25.9-33.7%). After controlling for various cofounders, multivariate regression analysis indicated that diabetes was substantially and independently related to sarcopenic obesity, but not with sarcopenia. When compared to patients in the normal and obese groups, those with sarcopenia and sarcopenic obesity had considerably higher rates of all-cause death. Furthermore, after adjusting for numerous variables, including the presence of each group in four models, multivariate Cox proportional hazards analysis indicated that the presence of diabetes was substantially linked with increased all-cause mortality in all 308 patients.

In conclusion, the findings may not be relevant to patients from different communities, according to the researchers. They also added, a future study examining other ethnicities receiving dialysis, notably Caucasian patients, using the new European consensus on definition and diagnosis would be beneficial.

Reference:

Ishimura, E., Okuno, S., Nakatani, S., Mori, K., Miyawaki, J., Okazaki, H., Sugie, N., Norimine, K., Yamakawa, K., Tsujimoto, Y., Shoji, S., Inaba, M., Yamakawa, T., & Emoto, M. (2021). Significant Association of Diabetes With Mortality of Chronic Hemodialysis Patients, Independent of the Presence of Obesity, Sarcopenia, and Sarcopenic Obesity. Journal of Renal Nutrition. https://doi.org/10.1053/j.jrn.2021.07.003