A new study led by Lund University researchers has identified epigenetic biomarkers that can predict the risk of cardiovascular disease in people with type 2 diabetes. The findings could lead to earlier and more accurate interventions, significantly impacting patient outcomes.
In a significant breakthrough, researchers from Lund University in Sweden have unveiled a new method to predict cardiovascular disease in patients with type 2 diabetes using DNA methylation as a biomarker. This discovery, published in Cell Reports Medicine, has the potential to revolutionize the early detection and prevention of cardiovascular complications in diabetic patients.
People with type 2 diabetes face a higher risk of heart attacks, strokes, anginas and other coronary heart diseases, with their likelihood being up to four times that of non-diabetics. Early identification of those at greatest risk could be life-saving.
An international team of researchers led by Charlotte Ling, a professor of diabetes research at Lund University, conducted an extensive study involving 752 individuals newly diagnosed with type 2 diabetes from the diabetes cohort known as ANDIS (All New Diabetics in Skåne).
For over seven years, the researchers monitored the participants’ cardiovascular health, during which time 102 individuals experienced serious cardiovascular events.
“By studying chemical changes in the participants’ genome — so-called DNA methylation — we wanted to find epigenetic biomarkers that predict cardiovascular disease. DNA methylation controls which genes are active or turned off in our cells, and when it does not work properly, it can contribute to the development of cardiovascular disease,” Ling said in a news release.
The study identified over 400 sites with altered DNA methylation in blood samples. Of these, 87 sites were used to develop a scoring system capable of assessing an individual’s risk of developing severe cardiovascular complications.
“We could say with a 96 percent probability whether someone was not at risk of developing cardiovascular disease. The negative prediction value was thus very strong. Since the follow-up of the participants of just over seven years is relatively short, we need to follow them longer in order to probably also get a stronger positive prediction value — that is, how great the probability is that a person will actually get a macrovascular event,” added Sonia García-Calzón, a researcher at the University of Navarra in Pamplona, Spain.
The implications of this study are profound. It suggests that individuals identified as high risk due to their DNA methylation profiles could receive targeted preventive measures. These measures could include lifestyle changes related to diet, physical activity, weight management, improved blood sugar control and potentially new treatments focused on heart and vascular protection.
“Healthcare today uses clinical variables such as age, gender, blood pressure, smoking, harmful cholesterol, long-term blood sugar and kidney function to estimate the risk of future cardiovascular disease, but it is a rather blunt tool. If you add DNA methylation, you have a much better measure of a future risk. We therefore want to develop a kit for clinical use, so that a simple blood sample can measure DNA methylation and predict who is at risk of becoming ill using the scoring scale,” Ling concluded.
Source: Lund University