Association of pre-diabetes with the risks of adverse health outcomes and complex multimorbidity: evidence from population-based studies in the NIS and UK Biobank.

Introduction: This study aimed to examine the risk of common diseases among people with pre-diabetes and explored the relationship between pre-diabetes and multimorbidity (in this case, two or more comorbid diseases).

Methods: An observational multicohort study using data from the UK Biobank database and the National Inpatient Sample (NIS) database (2016-2018) was conducted. We analysed 461 535 participants and 17 548 442 patients aged 18 years or older from both databases, of whom 14.0% and 0.7% were diagnosed with pre-diabetes, respectively. A total of 76 common diseases of various body systems were selected as adverse health outcomes for analysis.

Results: Among 64 523 individuals with pre-diabetes in the UK Biobank, the mean age was 60 years, 35 304 (54.7%) were female. There were 24 non-overlapping diseases associated with pre-diabetes with significant multiple test results in both databases, and most of them are circulatory system diseases. Compared with normoglycaemia, the confounder-adjusted HR in the UK Biobank for pre-diabetes was 1.46 (95% CI 1.43 to 1.49) for accompanying complex multimorbidity (ie, four or more pre-diabetes-related diseases), the corresponding confounder-adjusted OR in the NIS study was 10.03 (95% CI 9.66 to 10.40).

Conclusion: Pre-diabetes was associated with a significantly higher risk of multimorbidity. Pre-diabetes, thus, might represent an important target for multimorbidity prevention, and stronger emphasis on its management seems necessary to reduce the risk of the development of multiple comorbidities, especially before the onset of overt diabetes.