Diabetes mellitus and the risk of abdominal aortic aneurysm: A systematic review and meta-analysis of prospective studies

Background

Diabetes mellitus has been associated with reduced risk of abdominal aortic aneurysm in a number of epidemiological studies, however, until recently little data from prospective studies have been available. We therefore conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of prospective studies to quantify the association.

Material and methods

Two investigators searched the PubMed and Embase databases for studies of diabetes and abdominal aortic aneurysm up to May 8th 2018. Prospective studies were included if they reported adjusted relative risk (RR) estimates and 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs) of abdominal aortic aneurysm associated with a diabetes diagnosis. Summary relative risks were estimated by use of a random effects model.

Results

We identified 16 prospective studies with 16,572 cases among 4,563,415 participants that could be included in the meta-analysis. The summary RR for individuals with diabetes compared to individuals without diabetes was 0.58 (95% CI: 0.51–0.66, I²?=?40.4%, p_{heterogeneity}?=?0.06). The results persisted when stratified by sex, duration of follow-up, and in most of the other subgroup analyses. There was no evidence of publication bias with Egger's test, p?=?0.64 or by inspection of the funnel plots.

Conclusions

These results suggest that individuals with diabetes mellitus are at a reduced risk of abdominal aortic aneurysm, however, whether pharmacological agents for diabetes mellitus explain this observation needs to be clarified in future studies.