Patients newly diagnosed with clinical type 2 diabetes during oral glucocorticoid treatment and observed for 14 years: all-cause mortality and clinical developments.

Chronic exposure to glucocorticoids (GCs) has many side effects including glucose intolerance and diabetes and may accelerate the occurrence of cardiovascular disease and increase mortality. We studied the 14-year clinical development of diabetes in patients diagnosed with diabetes during GC treatment. A population-based sample of 1369 people newly diagnosed with clinical type 2 diabetes underwent a clinical examination at diagnosis, and surviving patients were followed up 6 and 14 years later. Patients receiving oral GC treatment at diagnosis were compared with the other patients. Of 1369 patients, 35 (2.6%) were treated with oral GCs at diabetes diagnosis. At that point, patients on GC therapy were older (69.9 versus 65.3 years, p = 0.007, sex-adjusted) and tended to have lower BMI (26.1 versus 29.1 kg/m(2) , p = 0.023), also 6 years after diagnosis (24.8 versus 28.4, p = 0.011), than patients not being treated with GCs. In a univariate Cox regression model, GC treatment at diagnosis increased all-cause mortality with a hazard ratio (95% confidence interval) of 2.01 (1.39-2.89, p = 0.0002, n = 1369), while this decreased to 1.41 (0.98-2.04, p = 0.065, n = 1369) when adjusted for age and sex and to 1.39 (0.92-2.11, p = 0.12, n = 1086) when risk factors, complications and cancer were added to the model. Apart from differences in age and overweight, patients in this relatively small sample of those diagnosed with clinical type 2 diabetes during GC treatment were comparable at diagnosis and during 14 years of follow-up with those not treated with GCs, including with regard to the adjusted mortality rate.