Genetic variants of diabetes risk and incident cardiovascular events in chronic coronary artery disease.

Objective: To determine whether information from genetic risk variants for diabetes is associated with cardiovascular events incidence.

Methods: From the about 30 known genes associated with diabetes, we genotyped single-nucleotide polymorphisms at the 10 loci most associated with type-2 diabetes in 425 subjects from the MASS-II Study, a randomized study in patients with multi-vessel coronary artery disease. The combined genetic information was evaluated by number of risk alleles for diabetes. Performance of genetic models relative to major cardiovascular events incidence was analyzed through Kaplan-Meier curve comparison and Cox Hazard Models and the discriminatory ability of models was assessed for cardiovascular events by calculating the area under the ROC curve.

Results: Genetic information was able to predict 5-year incidence of major cardiovascular events and overall-mortality in non-diabetic individuals, even after adjustment for potential confounders including fasting glycemia. Non-diabetic individuals with high genetic risk had a similar incidence of events then diabetic individuals (cumulative hazard of 33.0 versus 35.1% of diabetic subjects). The addition of combined genetic information to clinical predictors significantly improved the AUC for cardiovascular events incidence (AUC = 0.641 versus 0.610).

Conclusions: Combined information of genetic variants for diabetes risk is associated to major cardiovascular events incidence, including overall mortality, in non-diabetic individuals with coronary artery disease.

Clinical Trial Registration Information: Medicine, Angioplasty, or Surgery Study (MASS II). Unique identifier: ISRCTN66068876 URL.