Low-risk Lifestyle and Health Factors and Risk of Mortality and Vascular Complications in Chinese Patients With Diabetes.
Sun Z., Hu Y., Yu C., Guo Y., Pang Y., Sun D., Pei P., Yang L., Chen Y., Du H., Jin J., Burgess S., Hacker A., Chen J., Chen Z., Lv J., Li L.
BACKGROUND: There is an evidence gap about whether a low-risk lifestyle is as important as achieving blood pressure (BP) and random blood glucose (RBG) control. OBJECTIVES: To explore the long-term impacts and relative importance of low-risk lifestyle and health factors on the risk of all-cause and cancer mortality and macrovascular and microvascular complications among patients with diabetes. METHODS: This study included 26,004 diabetes patients in the China Kadoorie Biobank. We defined 5 lifestyle factors (smoking, alcohol drinking, physical activity, fruit and vegetable intake, and waist-to-hip ratio) and 2 health factors (BP and RBG). Cox regression was used to yield adjusted hazard ratios (HRs) and CIs for individual and combined lifestyle and health factors with the risks of diabetes-related outcomes. RESULTS: There were 5063 deaths, 6848 macrovascular complications, and 2055 microvascular complications that occurred during a median follow-up of 10.2 years. Combined low-risk lifestyle factors were associated with lower risk of all main outcomes, with HRs (95% CIs) for participants having 4 to 5 low-risk factors vs 0 to 1 of 0.50 (0.44-0.57) for all-cause mortality, 0.55 (0.43-0.71) for cancer mortality, 0.60 (0.54-0.67) for macrovascular complications, and 0.75 (0.62-0.91) for microvascular complications. The combined 4 to 5 low-risk lifestyle factors showed relative importance in predicting all-cause and cancer mortality and macrovascular complications. CONCLUSIONS: Assuming causality exists, our findings suggest that adopting a low-risk lifestyle should be regarded as important as achieving ideal BP and glycemic goals in the prevention and management of diabetes-related adverse outcomes.