Sex Differences in the Incidence of Diabetes Mellitus among Subjects with Metabolic Syndrome

WENHUI ZHAO, XIAOYAN XING, HAIQING ZHU, SHI BU, RUIFEN DENG, ZHAOQING LI, XUELI LIU, WENYING YANG, Beijing, China 

Background Sex differences in the prevalence of diabetes mellitus were observed in China. But whether there is difference between sexes in the incidence of diabetes mellitus did not describe before.

Methods We prospectively investigated the association between sexes and incidence of diabetes mellitus among 159 male and 301 female subjects with metabolic syndrome. Cox proportional hazards regression models were used to estimate this association.

Results During a mean follow-up of 2.5 years, 15 incident cases (9 in male, 6 in female) of diabetes mellitus were identified. The multivariable-adjusted (age, education, occupation, medicine treatment, waist circumference, blood pressure, HbA1c, triglyceride and low density lipoprotein cholesterol at baseline) hazard ratio (HR) for incidence of diabetes mellitus associated with sex was 6.49 (95% confidence interval [CI] 1.51-28.0). There was a 31.4% increase of the risk of diabetes mellitus with 1 mmol/l increase of triglyceride (95% CI 1.02-1.70) in all subjects, with 65.0% increase in male (95% CI 1.12-2.43) and 37.0% increase in female (95% CI 0.45-4.15), respectively.

Conclusions The current study indicates the risk of diabetes mellitus is higher in male than female subjects with metabolic syndrome. Triglyceride may contribute to the high risk in male.