Validation of the Swedish diabetes regrouping scheme in adult-onset diabetes in China

<p><span><b>Abstract</b></span></p> <p><b>Background  </b>Re-classification of diabetes is vital in providing precise management and reducing risk of diabetes complications. This study aimed to validate the practicality of the Swedish diabetes re-grouping scheme in Chinese adults with newly diagnosed diabetes. We conducted a cross-sectional survey of 15772 patients with adult-onset newly-diagnosed diabetes in China from April 2015 to October 2017. Cluster analysis used by the Swedish study was employed to re-group our patients. Glutamate decarboxylase antibodies (GADA), age onset, body mass index (BMI), Hemoglobin A_1c (HbA_1c), homoeostatic model assessment 2 estimates of β-cell function (HOMA2-B) and insulin resistance (HOMA2-IR) were used to perform the TwoStep and k-means clustering. Characteristics of the clusters were compared between the patients from this study and those from the Swedish study.</p> <p><b>Results </b><span>Our patients clustered into five subgroups: 6.2% were gathered in the severe autoimmune diabetes (SAID) subgroup, 24.8% were in the severe insulin deficient diabetes (SIDD) subgroup, 16.6% were in the severe insulin resistance diabetes (SIRD) subgroup, 21.6% were in the mild obesity-related diabetes (MOD) subgroup and 30.9% were in the mild age-related diabetes (MARD) subgroup. When compared with the Swedish population, the proportion of SIDD subgroup was higher. In general, Chinese patients had younger age, lower BMI, higher HbA_1c, lower HOMA2-B and HOMA2-IR, and higher insulin use but lower metformin usage than the Swedish patients. </span></p> <p><strong>Content</strong> The data contains the figures and tables to describe the characteristics and the variable distributions of Chinese diabetic patients in each of the five clusters. Additionally, the comparisons between the Chinese and Swedish patients with diabetes were  presented in it as well.</p> <p><span><b>Conclusion </b>The Swedish diabetes regrouping scheme is applicable to adult-onset diabetes in China, with a high proportion of patients with the severe insulin deficient diabetes. Further validations of long-term diabetes complications remain warranted in future studies. </span></p>