Association of combined healthy lifestyle with risk of adverse outcomes in patients with prediabetes

Objective

Prediabetes and lifestyle factors have been associated with the risks of multiple adverse outcomes, but the effect of a healthy lifestyle on prediabetes-related complications remains unknown. We aimed to investigate whether the risks of multiple adverse outcomes including incident type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), cardiovascular disease (CVD), and chronic kidney disease (CKD) among individuals with prediabetes can be offset by a broad combination of healthy lifestyle factors.

Methods

This prospective study used data from the UK Biobank cohort. An overall lifestyle score ranging from 0 to 6 was created with 1 point for each of the 6 healthy lifestyle factors: no current smoking, moderate alcohol consumption, regular physical activity, healthy diet, no overweight or obese, and adequate sleep duration. T2DM, CVD, and CKD were ascertained during a median follow-up of 14 years. Cox proportional hazard regression models were used to estimate the associations. Sensitivity analyses were performed to test the robustness of the results.

Results

We included 202,993 participants without T2DM, CVD, and CKD at baseline (mean age 55.5 years [SD 8.1]; 54.7% were women). Among these participants, 6,745, 16,961, and 6,260 participants eventually developed T2DM, CVD, and CKD, respectively. Compared with the participants with normoglycaemia, those with prediabetes showed a higher risk of these adverse outcomes. In addition, those prediabetic participants with a lifestyle score of 0-1 had a significantly higher risk of T2DM (hazard ratio [HR] 16.73, 95% CI 14.24, 19.65), CVD (HR 1.96, 95% CI 1.74, 2.21), and CKD (HR 1.92, 95% CI 1.58, 2.34) compared with those with no prediabetes and a score of 5–6. Moreover, among the participants with prediabetes, the HRs for T2DM, CVD, and CKD comparing a lifestyle score of 5–6 versus 0-1 decreased to 0.43 (95% CI 0.36, 0.51), 0.52 (95% CI 0.44, 0.62), and 0.60 (95% CI 0.46, 0.79), respectively.

Conclusions

Combined healthy lifestyle factors were associated with a significantly lower risk of multiple adverse outcomes, including T2DM, CVD, and CKD. This indicates that prioritising multifactorial approaches to behavioural lifestyle modification is crucial for preventing and postponing the development of complications related to prediabetes.