Platelet count and 8-year incidence of diabetes: The Korean Genome and Epidemiology Study.

AIMS: The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of platelet count on the incidence of type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM) in the overall Korean adults and in participants with impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) at baseline.

METHODS: A total of 7502 participants (3528 men and 3974 women) aged 40-69 years were enrolled in this study. The study population was divided into tertiles (T) of serum platelet counts. We used Cox regression to analyse the relationship between baseline platelet count and new-onset type 2 DM.

RESULTS: A total of 602 (8.0%) subjects developed type 2 DM during a mean follow-up of 8.4 years. Compared to the lowest tertile, the hazard ratio (95% confidence interval [CI]) for the incidence of type 2 DM was 1.28 (1.04-1.57) for T3 after adjusting for possible confounding factors. In subjects with IGT at baseline, the hazard ratio (95% CI) for the incidence of type 2 DM in T3 compared with T1 was 1.45 (1.05-2.00) after adjusting for the same confounders.

CONCLUSION: This prospective longitudinal study demonstrated that the incidence of type 2 DM increased as the serum platelet count at baseline increased within the normal range. This positive association was more prominent in subjects with IGT.