Continuous Glucose Monitoring-Derived Metrics and Cardiovascular Risk Among People With Diabetes: Systematic Scoping...

Conventional clinical markers guide cardiovascular risk stratification; however, continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) data remain absent from prediction models. A synthesis of the current literature is needed to clarify the prognostic relevance of CGM data for cardiovascular outcomes in people with diabetes.

This scoping review aimed to identify published studies examining (1) the associations between glycemic control and cardiovascular outcomes and (2) the predictive value of CGM-derived metrics in cardiovascular risk assessment.

MEDLINE and Embase were searched from inception to March 11, 2025, for peer-reviewed, original research that included CGM-derived metrics and cardiovascular disease (CVD) outcomes. Two reviewers screened the records independently.

A total of 53 studies were identified. These studies focused on type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes, both diabetes types, or prediabetes. Clinical outcomes were examined in 16 studies, while subclinical outcomes were assessed in 40 studies. Of the 53 studies, 47 were cross-sectional studies and 6 were longitudinal studies. All studies were association studies, and 3 included secondary analyses of predictive performance. However, none applied machine learning-based methods. A wide range of CGM-derived metrics and CVD outcomes, both clinical and subclinical, were studied in the literature.

Overall, the findings were inconsistent across studies, and this was likely due to methodological weaknesses such as underpowered analyses. Time-in-range was both the most studied metric and associated with cardiovascular risk in the largest single study. Only the mean amplitude of glycemic excursions was consistently associated with CVD in most studies investigating this metric, when using statistical significance as a pragmatic indicator of consistency across heterogeneous studies. The prognostic value of CGM-derived metrics for CVD outcomes is currently underexplored. Longitudinal prediction studies on clinical CVD outcomes, leveraging the potential of routinely collected CGM data, are needed.