UAB Comprehensive Diabetes Center (UCDC) Associate Director W. Timothy Garvey, M.D., and collaborators recently published “Cardiometabolic Disease Staging and Major Adverse Cardiovascular Event Prediction in 2 Prospective Cohorts” in the journal JACC: Advances.

Garvey is also principal investigator of the NIH-funded UAB Diabetes Research Center and a professor in the Department of Nutrition Sciences.

Authors note the purpose of their study was to “examine whether a modified cardiometabolic disease staging (CMDS) system, a validated diabetes prediction model, predicts major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE).”

Researchers defined MACE as cardiovascular death, nonfatal myocardial infarction, and/or nonfatal stroke.

Clinical parameters considered in the modified CMDS include factors like glucose, body mass index (BMI), diabetes, smoking, and more. The CMDS was originally developed to predict diabetes onset, but in this study it performed similarly or better than two commonly known cardiovascular disease prediction risk tools: the Pooled Cohort Risk Equation and the Framingham Risk Score.

Researchers note the significance of what was originally a diabetes prediction model performing well in assessing cardiovascular disease: “the ability of CMDS to predict both CVD and diabetes underscores the role of the insulin-resistant state as a single pathophysiological process causing both vascular and metabolic disease.”

The research publication was made possible by the Reasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS)study, which is an ongoing, national cohort study sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This particular study included 20,234 REGARDS participants.

Authors included Carrie Howell, Ph.D., UAB Division of Preventive Medicine; Li Zhang, MD, UAB Department of Biostatistics; Tapan Mehta, Ph.D., UAB Department of Family and Community Medicine; Lua Wilkinson, Ph.D., Novo Nordisk, INC; April Carson, Ph.D., University of Mississippi Medical Center Department of Medicine; Andrea Cherrington, M.D., MPH, UAB Division of Preventive Medicine; and Nengjun Yi, Ph.D., UAB Department of Biostatistics.