Proneurotensin Predicts Cardiovascular Disease in an Elderly Population

The gut hormone neurotensin promotes fat absorption, diet-induced weight gain, and liver steatosis. Its stable precursor-hormone fragment "proneurotensin" predicts cardiometabolic disease in middle-aged populations, especially in women.

To test if proneurotensin predicts cardiovascular disease (CVD) and diabetes development in an elderly population and whether there are gender differences in this respect.

Fasting proneurotensin was measured in plasma from 4804 participants (mean age 69 ± 6 years) of the Malmö Preventive Project and subjects were followed up for development of CVD and diabetes during 5.4 years.

Multivariate adjusted Cox proportional hazard models CVD were used to relate the proneurotensin to the risk of incident CVD and diabetes in all subjects and in gender-stratified analyses.

In total, there were 456 first CVD events and 222 incident cases of diabetes. The hazard ratio [HR (95% confidence interval)] for CVD per 1 standard deviation (SD) increment of proneurotensin was 1.10 (1.01 to 1.21); P = 0.037, and the above vs below median HR was 1.27 (1.06 to 1.54); P = 0.011, with similar effect sizes in both genders. There was no significant association between proneurotensin and incident diabetes in the entire population (P = 0.52) or among men (P = 0.52). However, in women proneurotensin predicted diabetes incidence with a per 1 SD increment HR of 1.28 (1.30 to 1.59); P = 0.025 and an above vs below median HR of 1.41 (1.10 to 1.80); P = 0.007.

In the elderly population, proneurotensin independently predicts development of CVD in both genders, whereas it only predicts diabetes in women.