A simple blood test could “strongly predict” if type 2 diabetes patients will develop heart or kidney disease.
Alongside the new red-flag system, a medicine to curb the chance of diabetics developing the disease has been revealed.
Harvard University discovered over 2,500 people with type 2 diabetes and kidney disease also had high levels of four biomarkers in the blood.
These signs could strongly predict future heart and kidney disease.
High concentrations of each biomarker at the beginning of the study were found to strongly predict how severe each participant’s heart and kidney issues would become.
Treatment has come with a new blood test: patients who took diabetes medication canagliflozin had lower levels of the four indicators, which “substantially” reduced the risk of hospitalization for heart failure.
After one year, people who took 100mg canagliflozin saw their biomarker levels rise from three to 10 percent.
Meanwhile, those who took a placebo saw an increase of six to 29 percent.
Lead author Professor James Januzzi, Harvard Medical School, said: “High levels of certain biomarkers are indicators of heart and kidney complications and may help predict future risk of disease progression.
“Treatment with canagliflozin, a sodium-glucose co-transporter 2 inhibitor, lowered biomarker levels and reduced the risk of hospitalization for heart failure and other heart complications in people at the highest risk.
“It was reassuring to discover that canagliflozin helped reduce risks the most in people with the highest chances for complications.
“Future studies are needed to better understand how Type 2 diabetes in conjunction with kidney disease develops and progresses so that we may initiate life-saving therapies earlier before symptoms of heart and kidney disease have occurred.
“Given that the American Heart Association/American College of Cardiology and the American Diabetes Association now all recommend measurement of biomarkers to enhance the ability to predict risk in persons with Type 2 diabetes, these results may considerably extend the reach of biomarker-based testing, refining accuracy even further.”
Researchers analyzed the biomarker data from 2,627 people’s blood samples to study the effect of canagliflozin.
The four indicators were studied one and three years into the study published in Circulation.
Each biomarker was assessed on how it could prognose kidney problems and risk of death from kidney or cardiovascular disease.
Patients were separated into low, medium and high-risk categories.
Those at a higher risk – as suggested by the biomarkers – had a dramatically higher risk of progressive kidney failure and cardiovascular complications during the three-year period.
The four biomarkers analyzed in the study were: N-terminal pro–B-type natriuretic peptide; high-sensitivity cardiac troponin T; growth differentiation factor-15; and insulin-like growth factor binding protein 7.
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