The Finnish Diabetes Risk Score (FINDRISC), incident diabetes and low-grade inflammation

The FINDRISC was created to predict the development of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Since T2DM associates with inflammation we evaluated if the FINDRISC could predict either current or incident T2DM, and elevated high sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP).

41,880 people (age 41.9 ± 9.7 years; 31% female) evaluated between 2008 and 2016 were included. First, the cross-sectional association between the FINDRISC with presence of either T2DM or hs-CRP ≥ 2.0 mg/L was tested. After a 5 ± 3 years follow-up we tested the score predictive value for incident T2DM and inflammation in respectively 10,559 individuals without diabetes and in a subset of 2,816 individuals having no elevated hs-CRP at baseline.

In the cross sectional analysis the FINDRISC was associated with both T2DM (OR 1.24, 95% CI: 1.23-1.26, P < 0.001) and inflammation (OR 1.10, 95% CI: 1.09-1.11, P < 0.001) per FINDRISC unit, as well as in longitudinal analyses (OR 1.17, 95% CI: 1.14-1.20, P < 0.001; and OR 1.04, 95% CI: 1.02-1.07, P < 0.001; respectively, per FINDRISC unit). The C-statistic for incident T2DM and inflammation was 0.79 (95% CI 0.77-0.82) and 0.55 (95% CI 0.53-0.58), respectively.

The FINDRISC shows good discrimination for incident T2DM but less for inflammation.