Impaired glucose tolerance predicts all-cause mortality among older men at high risk for cardiovascular disease in China

Aims: To investigate the potential association between impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) and all-cause mortality among older men at high risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD) in China. Methods: In this prospective observational study, 460 older men aged ≥60 years were determined to have either IGT or normal glucose tolerance (NGT) based on an oral glucose tolerance test conducted between May 2005 and May 2007. IGT and NGT were diagnosed according to the 1999 WHO diagnostic criteria. All subjects were followed until March 2017. The primary outcome studied was all-cause mortality. Multivariate Cox models were used to estimate relative risk for all-cause mortality. Results: During a mean follow-up of 11.2 years, forty-three (21.4%) subjects in the IGT group and twenty-nine (11.2%) subjects in the NGT group died (HR 2.05, 95% CI 1.28–3.28, P = 0.003). Multivariate Cox proportional-hazards analysis demonstated that IGT was significantly associated with increased risk for all-cause mortality, composite cardiovascular outcome, nonfatal stroke and heart failure after adjusting for potential confounding factors. Logistic regression analysis showed that IGT at baseline (P < 0.05) rather than incident type 2 diabetes was a risk factor of all-cause mortality. Conclusions: IGT was significantly associated with all-cause mortality in older Chinese men at high risk for CVD.