Research Paper|Volume 13, Issue 11|pp 15433—15443

Galectin-3/adiponectin as a new biological indicator for assessing the risk of type 2 diabetes: a cross-sectional study in a community population

Diaozhu Lin¹, Xiaosi Hong¹, Kan Sun¹, Xiaoyun Zhang¹, Hong Lian¹, Jiahuan Wang¹, Na Mao¹, Xiuwei Zhang², Meng Ren¹, Li Yan¹, Feng Li¹, Lili You¹

¹Department of Endocrinology, Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hospital, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou 510120, People’s Republic of China
²Department of Endocrinology, Dongguan People's Hospital, Dongguan 523000, People’s Republic of China

* Equal contribution

Received: October 19, 2020Accepted: March 13, 2021Published: June 7, 2021

https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.203101

Copyright: © 2021 Lin et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Objective: This study aimed to explore the association between the risk of newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes and galectin-3 and adiponectin and to investigate whether their joint action shows a favorable diabetes assessment performance.

Methods: We conducted a community-based study in 135 newly diagnosed patients with type 2 diabetes and 270 age- and sex-matched nondiabetic patients. Odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals were determined using logistic regression analysis. Receiver operating characteristic curve, decision curve analysis and calibration plot were used to explore their efficacy and clinical utility for models.

Results: High quartiles of galectin-3/adiponectin (quartile 4 vs 1: OR 2.43 [95% CIs: 1.21–5.00]) showed the strongest correlation with an increased risk of type 2 diabetes in the total population, which was consistent in the older population (age≥50 years old) in adjustment models. The combination + lipids + galectin-3/adiponectin model (AUC = 0.72 [95% CIs: 0.66-0.77]) displayed better diabetes assessment performance than the other two models.

Conclusions: High galectin-3 and low adiponectin levels were associated with the high risk of diabetes, and their joint action was a superior promising factor for evaluating diabetes risk. The diabetes discriminative strength of galectin-3/adiponectin was better in the older population than the younger.