Severity of kidney involvement as predictor of death, severe heart failure and renal events in patients with type 2 diabetes: data from a prospective cohort

Type 2 diabetes is associated with an increased risk for end-stage renal disease and heart failure, contributing to premature death. All these 3 events are inter-related, suggesting common risk factors and/or pathophysiological pathways.

The SURDIAGENE (SUrvie Rénale DIAbète et GENEtique) cohort is a single centre hospital-based cohort of persons living with type 2 diabetes, recruiting participants at Poitiers university hospital, France, from 2002 to 2011 with further follow-up till 2015.

Here, we describe the cumulative prevalence of hard renal events (sustained doubling of serum creatinine and/or renal replacement therapy), heart failure leading to hospitalization (HFH) and all-cause death, according to the KDIGO classification, which considers CKD stages according to CKD EPI equation [1], [2], [3], [4], [5] and albuminuria (A1, A2, A3) according to albumin/creatinine ratio with thresholds at 30 and 300 mg/g. We considered 1450 participants with KDIGO stage available at baseline.

Considering a cumulated follow-up duration of 10667 patient.years with 100 renal events, 247 HFH and 527 deaths, our study showed that the more severe the KDIGO stage, the higher the incidence rate not only for renal event, but also for HFH and for all-cause death. For instance, in CKD1A1 and CKD4A3 the incidence rates for hard renal events, HFH and death were 0.98 and 140.70, 4.46 and 107.09, 13.64 and 156.56 per 1000 patient.years, respectively. Interestingly, the incidence of renal event was lower than the incidence of all-cause death in all KDIGO stages, at variance with the data from recent renal outcome trials on SGLT2 inhibitors and finerenone.

We conclude that KDIGO stages should be considered for renal but also for HFH risk classification. The analysis of the respective incidence of renal events and deaths in observational studies and RCTs deserves further evaluation in type 2 diabetes.