Identification of Patient Clusters with Distinct Disease Progression Patterns Utilizing a Nationwide Finnish...

Variability in the clinical presentation of patients with type 2 diabetes (T2D) is high and underlines the need for more personalized patient care. This nationwide study aimed to describe characteristics, treatment patterns, and disease progression of Finnish patients with T2D (N = 302,987), and to identify patient clusters with distinct progression patterns based on the occurrence of diabetes-related complications.

The study included all adult patients with incident T2D in Finland between 2010 and 2019. Data were collected from national health and social care registers, data lakes, and a private healthcare provider between 1996 and 2021. Patient clusters were identified based on disease progression, defined by the occurrence of 22 pre-defined end-points, using likelihood-based growth mixture modeling.

Five patient clusters with stable (C1; n = 133,951), mild (C2; n = 52,819), moderate (C3, n = 43,488), rapid (C4; n = 10,159), and extremely rapid progression (C5; n = 1973) were identified. The mean number of end-point complications per patient at baseline ranged from 0.2 to 2.3 across clusters and remained stable in C1-C3 over the first 5 years. In C5, the number increased to 5.5 and 7.2 during the first and third follow-up years, respectively, with a similar but more modest annual increase observed in C4. Cardiovascular complications increased more rapidly in C5 and C4 than C1-C3. T2D medication use was more common in milder clusters, whereas 31.4% and 48.2% of patients in C4 and C5, respectively, had no T2D medication. The rate of certain infections and values of creatinine, hemoglobin, and erythrocytes, increased with cluster severity.

Diagnosis of several other new conditions, particularly cardiovascular complications, at or soon after incident T2D diagnosis predicts poor prognosis. The results further support a comprehensive approach in diabetes care, including evaluation and treatment of cardiovascular diseases alongside glycemic control.