Investigators of the Data from an Epidemiological Study on the Insulin Resistance Syndrome (DESIR) have developed a simple clinical diabetes risk score in order to help identify individuals at high risk of developing type 2 diabetes. They also studied the impact of biological and genetic polymorphisms in predicting diabetes. Among the 1,863 men and 1,954 women of the study, 140 men and 63 women developed diabetes over the 9-year follow-up. Simple variables included in the risk score were waist circumference, smoking, and hypertension in men, while selected variables were waist circumference, hypertension, and familial history of diabetes in women. The corresponding areas under the receiver operating curves (ROCs) were 0.710 in men and 0.827 in women. Combining several clinical and biological variables in a predictive equation, the areas under the ROCs were 0.850 in men and 0.917 in women, and the addition of polymorphisms did not influence the area under the ROC. Based on the findings, it may be possible to identify subjects at high risk of developing diabetes using simple clinical variables.
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