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Grip strength not tied to incident type 2 diabetes
Grip strength during a 10-year period does not appear to be associated with the risk for incident type 2 diabetes in adults, according to findings published in Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice.
François R. Jornayvaz, MD, of the service of endocrinology, diabetes, hypertension and nutrition at Geneva University Hospital, and colleagues evaluated data from the CoLaus study on 2,318 adults (mean age, 60.2 years; 1,354 women) to determine the association of grip strength with incident type 2 diabetes after a follow-up of 5.5 and 10.7 years.
Type 2 diabetes developed in 8.2% of participants after 5.5 years and in 7.3% after 10.7 years.
Absolute baseline grip strength was higher among participants who developed type 2 diabetes compared with participants who did not develop type 2 diabetes in univariate analysis (35.3 kg vs. 33.2 kg; P = .013). Type 2 diabetes and analysis between grip strength expressed in 5-kg increments were negatively associated after adjustment for age and sex (OR = 0.88; 95% CI, 0.79-0.98) and age, sex and BMI (OR = 0.87; 95% CI, 0.78-0.97).
“In a homogenous population of healthy adults of a wide age range, grip strength is not associated with type 2 diabetes after taking into account the major risk factors for type 2 diabetes,” Jornayvaz told Endocrine Today. “This is important as most of the previous studies were conducted either in elderly subjects or in participants already presenting with type 2 diabetes. Assessing grip strength may not be useful in predicting type 2 diabetes. It is probably important to reinforce instead some ‘classic’ messages such as ‘eat less, eat better, more more.’ Grip strength should be assessed in a bigger study of healthy subjects followed over a long period of time. It would be important to find better markers useful in predicting the long term development of type 2 diabetes.” – by Amber Cox
For more information:
François R. Jornayvaz , MD, can be reached at francois.jornayvaz@hcuge.ch.
Disclosures: The authors report no relevant financial disclosures.