Li PF, et al. - Since numerous studies have shown that cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of mortality among people with diabetes mellitus (DM), however, no studies have assessed the risk of CVD-related mortality among different DM subgroups, researchers sought to investigate all-cause, CVD-related, and cancer-related mortality for different DM subgroups. Participants (age ≥ 20 years) were included from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey III (NHANES III) data set. Five previously identified subgroups of diabetes were evaluated for the risk of all-cause and cause-specific (CVD and cancer) mortality: severe autoimmune diabetes (SAID), severe insulin-deficient diabetes (SIDD), severe insulin-resistant diabetes, mild obesity-related diabetes (MOD), and mild age-related diabetes (MARD). In total, 712 adults were recruited and the median follow-up time was 12.71 years (range, 0.25-18.08 years). The study of patients from the NHANES III data set showed that the MARD subgroup appeared to have higher CVD-related mortality than the MOD subgroup among the various DM subgroups. Across the various diabetes subgroups, the all-cause and cancer-related mortality rates were identical. Moreover, the SAID and SIDD subgroups had a higher risk of retinopathy compared with the MARD subgroup, but there was no difference in nephropathy among the subgroups.