Published Aug 12, 2013

Cambridge, UK – Originally derived from a group of diabetes patients recruited from the 1970s to the 1990s, the UKPDS outcomes model is a widely-used risk tool for predicting cardiovascular outcomes, such as heart attack and stroke, in patients with diabetes. As treatment of diabetes and its complications has changed considerably since this time, it may no longer be a useful risk prediction tool. Researchers from the MRC Epidemiology Unit at the University of Cambridge used data from a contemporary cohort of individuals with diabetes detected by screening, the ADDITION-Europe study, to test whether the risk score predicted heart attack and stroke over five years. While the model tended to over-estimate risk, it was good at ranking individuals from low to high risk. As such, it is probably still the most appropriate cardiovascular risk prediction tool to use in individuals with diabetes. Dr. Libo Tao, a researcher on the study, says, “It is reassuring that the UKPDS tool can still be used to rank individuals with diabetes from low to high risk in terms of their chance of having a heart attack or stroke. This means the tool can be used to examine the cost-effectiveness of different approaches to treating diabetes from diagnosis.” The full study, “Performance of the UKPDS Outcomes Model for Prediction of Myocardial Infarction and Stroke in the ADDITION-Europe Trial Cohort,” is published in Value in Health.

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