Comparisons of the clinical outcomes between newly diagnosed early- and late-onset T2DM: a real-world study from the Shanghai Hospital Link Database

Objective: The aim of this study was to compare the differences in incident population, comorbidities, and glucose-lowering drug prescriptions between newly diagnosed patients with early-onset (T2DM) and those with late-onset T2DM to provide real-world evidence for clinical practice.

Methods: This study was based on the Shanghai Hospital Link Database (SHLD). Anonymized electronic medical record (EHR) data from 2013 to 2021 were included in this study. Newly-diagnosed patients with T2DM were defined as those without related diagnostic records or glucose-lowering medicine prescriptions in the past three years. Early-onset T2DM were defined as patients who were aged 18-40 years old at the first visit for T2DM to represent those who were born after the 1980s. And late-onset T2DM was defined as those aged 65-80 years old to represent those who were born in a relatively undeveloped period.

Results: There were a total of 35457 newly-diagnosed patients with early-onset T2DM and 149108 newly-diagnosed patients with late-onset T2DM included in this study. Compared with late-onset T2DM patients, more early-onset T2DM patients had dyslipidemia at the first visit to hospitals (9.5% V.S. 7.7%, P < 0.01) despite their significant age differences. Patients with early-onset T2DM were more likely to use metformin, DDP-4i, TZD, SGLT2-i, GLP-1 RA at their first visit to hospital.

Conclusions: Different characteristics were observed between patients with early-onset T2DM and those with late-onset T2DM. Compared with patients with late-onset T2DM, those with early-onset T2DM were more prone to dyslipidemia and had novel organ-protective drugs.