An Interactive Online App for Predicting Diabetes via Machine Learning from Environment-Polluting Chemical Exposure Data

Environmental exposures in machine learning and data mining approaches to diabetes etiology: A scoping review

BACKGROUND

Environmental exposures are implicated in diabetes etiology, but are poorly understood due to disease heterogeneity, complexity of exposures, and analytical challenges. Machine learning and data mining are artificial intelligence methods that can address these limitations. Despite their increasing adoption in etiology and prediction of diabetes research, the types of methods and exposures analyzed have not been thoroughly reviewed.

OBJECTIVE

We aimed to review articles that implemented machine learning and data mining methods to understand environmental exposures in diabetes etiology and disease prediction.

METHODS

We queried PubMed and Scopus databases for machine learning and data mining studies that used environmental exposures to understand diabetes etiology on September 19th, 2022. Exposures were classified into specific external, general external, or internal exposures. We reviewed machine learning and data mining methods and characterized the scope of environmental exposures studied in the etiology of general diabetes, type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes, and other types of diabetes.

RESULTS

We identified 44 articles for inclusion. Specific external exposures were the most common exposures studied, and supervised models were the most common methods used. Well-established specific external exposures of low physical activity, high cholesterol, and high triglycerides were predictive of general diabetes, type 2 diabetes, and prediabetes, while novel metabolic and gut microbiome biomarkers were implicated in type 1 diabetes.

DISCUSSION

The use of machine learning and data mining methods to elucidate environmental triggers of diabetes was largely limited to well-established risk factors identified using easily explainable and interpretable models. Future studies should seek to leverage machine learning and data mining to explore the temporality and co-occurrence of multiple exposures and further evaluate the role of general external and internal exposures in diabetes etiology.

Machine Learning Models for Data-Driven Prediction of Diabetes by Lifestyle Type

The prevalence of diabetes has been increasing in recent years, and previous research has found that machine-learning models are good diabetes prediction tools. The purpose of this study was to compare the efficacy of five different machine-learning models for diabetes prediction using lifestyle data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) database. The 1999-2020 NHANES database yielded data on 17,833 individuals data based on demographic characteristics and lifestyle-related variables. To screen training data for machine models, the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) forward propagation algorithm was utilized. For predicting diabetes, five machine-learning models (CATBoost, XGBoost, Random Forest (RF), Logistic Regression (LR), and Support Vector Machine (SVM)) were developed. Model performance was evaluated using accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, precision, F1 score, and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve. Among the five machine-learning models, the dietary intake levels of energy, carbohydrate, and fat, contributed the most to the prediction of diabetes patients. In terms of model performance, CATBoost ranks higher than RF, LG, XGBoost, and SVM. The best-performing machine-learning model among the five is CATBoost, which achieves an accuracy of 82.1% and an AUC of 0.83. Machine-learning models based on NHANES data can assist medical institutions in identifying diabetes patients.