Aldosterone and Insulin Resistance: Vicious Combination in Patients on Maintenance Hemodialysis

Explore the value of carotid ultrasound radiomics nomogram in predicting ischemic stroke risk in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus

Background and objective

Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) with insulin resistance (IR) is prone to damage the vascular endothelial, leading to the formation of vulnerable carotid plaques and increasing ischemic stroke (IS) risk. The purpose of this study is to develop a nomogram model based on carotid ultrasound radiomics for predicting IS risk in T2DM patients.

Methods

198 T2DM patients were enrolled and separated into study and control groups based on IS history. After manually delineating carotid plaque region of interest (ROI) from images, radiomics features were identified and selected using the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) regression to calculate the radiomics score (RS). A combinatorial logistic machine learning model and nomograms were created using RS and clinical features like the triglyceride-glucose index. The three models were assessed using area under curve (AUC) and decision curve analysis (DCA).

Results

Patients were divided into the training set and the testing set by the ratio of 0.7. 4 radiomics features were selected. RS and clinical variables were all statically significant in the training set and were used to create a combination model and a prediction nomogram. The combination model (radiomics + clinical nomogram) had the largest AUC in both the training set and the testing set (0.898 and 0.857), and DCA analysis showed that it had a higher overall net benefit compared to the other models.

Conclusions

This study created a carotid ultrasound radiomics machine-learning-based IS risk nomogram for T2DM patients with carotid plaques. Its diagnostic performance and clinical prediction capabilities enable accurate, convenient, and customized medical care.

[Glycemic control in patients with diabetes mellitus on hemodialysis]

Achievement of stabilization of carbohydrate metabolism in patients with diabetes mellitus, receiving renal replacement therapy with hemodialysis, is a significant problem in endocrinology. It has to do with multiple factors of this cohort of patients, which affect the level of glycemia, pharmacokinetic of drugs, the efficiency of glycemic control. At the moment, the most efficiency method of glycemic control in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus on hemodialysis is insulin therapy in the basis - bolus regime by analogues of human insulin. The use of oral hypoglycemic agents is significantly limited. The hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) remains the main parameter of glycemic control. The simultaneous use of continuous glucose monitoring allows to reveal the true level of glucose of the blood and to carry out the timely correction of therapy in order to achieve targets for glycemic control and to decrease the risk of hypoglycemic episodes. At the moment other glycemic control markers such as glycated albumin and fructosamine are described. However, in routine practice at the moment these indicators are not used due to the lack of sufficient evidentiary base of their use in this cohort of patients.