[Validation of the FINDRISC (FINnish Diabetes RIsk SCore) for prediction of the risk of type 2 diabetes in a population of southern Spain. Pizarra Study]

Abstract

Background and objective: The aim of this study was to validate the ability of the Finnish Diabetes Risk Score (FINDRISC) to predict the risk of DM2 in a population of south-eastern Spain (Pizarra Study).

Subjects and methods: The Pizarra Study is a population-based prospective study developed in the town of Pizarra (Málaga). The first phase of the study was conducted in 1997-1998, including 1051 individuals aged 18-65 years randomly selected from the municipal census of the town. In 2003-2004 the subjects participating in the first study were reassessed. 824 individuals completed the second phase of the study (78.4%). All participants without known diabetes underwent an oral glucose tolerance test both at baseline and follow-up. We evaluated the ability of the FINDRISC to detect undiagnosed DM2 (first phase: cross-sectional study) and in predicting the incidence of DM2 (second phase: cohort study).

Results: The test showed good results both to detect undiagnosed DM2 (ROC-AUC 0.74) and to predict incident DM2 (ROC-AUC 0.75). The best prediction of risk of incident DM2 was found in those subjects with fasting glucose >100mg/dl and a FINDRISC ≥9 (OR: 19.37; 95%IC: 8,86-42,34; P<.0001).

Conclusions: The results of our study show that FINDRISC can be a useful tool to detect subjects at high risk of diabetes in this population.