Kollerits B, et al. - This study investigated the association of afamin concentrations with prediabetes, type 2 diabetes, and insulin resistance (IR) in more than 20,000 individuals. A strong association of afamin with IR, prevalence, and incidence of type 2 diabetes was demonstrated in findings. This link was independent of major metabolic risk factors or parameters. Afamin might be a promising novel marker for the detection of individuals at high risk for the development of type 2 diabetes.

Methods

• Researchers investigated individual-level baseline (n = 20,136) and follow-up data (n = 14,017) of eight prospective cohort studies.
• Using random-effects meta-analyses, they combined study-level data.
• Main outcomes were prevalent and incident type 2 diabetes, prediabetes, and IR.
• They analyzed discrimination and reclassification of participants for incident type 2 diabetes.

Results

• Data showed that mean afamin concentrations between studies ranged from 61 to 73 mg/L.
• It was noted that the 8 studies included 1,398 prevalent and 585 incident cases of type 2 diabetes.
• Researchers observed that each increase of afamin by 10 mg/L was associated with prevalent type 2 diabetes (odds ratio [OR] 1.19 [95% CI 1.12–1.26], P = 5.96 × 10^-8).
• They found that afamin was positively associated with IR assessed by HOMA-IR (β 0.110 [95% CI 0.089–0.132], P = 1.37 × 10^-23).
• Most importantly, findings demonstrated that afamin measured at baseline was an independent predictor for 585 incident cases of type 2 diabetes (OR 1.30 [95% CI 1.23–1.38], P = 3.53 × 10^-19) and showed a significant and valuable gain in risk classification accuracy when added to this extended adjustment model.