One-hour post-load glucose improves the prediction of cardiovascular events in the OPERA study

Background To estimate the ability of fasting, 1-h, and 2-h post-load glucose to predict cardiovascular outcomes.Methods We examined a population-based study consisting of 977 middle-aged subjects who underwent an oral glucose tolerance test with glucose values measured at 0, 60, and 120 min. Participants were followed up to 24 years, and cardiovascular outcomes were collected from national registers. Predictive abilities of fasting, 1-h, and 2-h glucose were evaluated alone and in the prediction models with traditional cardiovascular risk factors using Cox proportional hazard models, the likelihood-ratio test, Harrell's concordance index and integrated discrimination improvement.Results Cardiovascular endpoint occurred in 222 (22.7%) participants during a median follow-up of 19.8 years. In the prognostic models, 1-h glucose (HR 1.67, 95%CI 1.10–2.53), but not fasting or 2-h glucose, predicted cardiovascular events statistically significantly. In addition, when adding glucose parameters into the model including traditional cardiovascular risk factors, only 1-h glucose improved the predictive ability (LR-test p=.046). Finally, 1-h glucose found slightly over 50% more cardiovascular endpoints that were not recognized by fasting or 2-h glucose levels.Conclusions Our findings support the earlier ones suggesting that 1-h glucose would be a better long-term predictor of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality than fasting or 2-h glucose.KEY MESSAGESIn addition to conventional CV risk factors,1-h but not fasting or 2-h post-load glucoses seems to be an independent predictor of cardiovascular events and seems to improve the predictive ability of the traditional cardiovascular risk model.Elevated 1-hpost-load glucose finds a large number (slightly over 50%)of cardiovascular endpoints that were not recognized by fasting or 2-h post-load glucose levels.One-hour glucose seems to be a better long-term predictor of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality than fasting or 2-h post-load glucose.