Young-onset diabetes in women with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome: A territory-wide retrospective analysis in Hong Kong

Abstract

Aim: To ascertain the risk of progression to diabetes among Chinese women with PCOS.

Methods: Women with PCOS (n = 3978) were identified from the Hong Kong Diabetes Surveillance Database based on the ICD-9 code for PCOS diagnosis and women without PCOS served as controls (n = 39780), matched 1:10 by age.

Result(s): The mean follow-up was 6.28 ± 4.20 and 6.95 ± 4.33 years in women with PCOS and controls, respectively. The crude incidence rate of diabetes was 14.25/1000 person-years in women with PCOS compared with 3.45 in controls. The crude hazard ratio of diabetes in women with PCOS was 4.23 (95 % CI: 3.73-4.80, p < 0.001). Further stratified by age group, the risk of developing diabetes decreased with increasing age but it remained significantly higher in women with PCOS across all age groups. It also suggested that the incidence rate of diabetes in women with PCOS aged 20-29 is highly comparable to that in healthy women aged ≥ 40. More than half of the incident diabetes captured during the follow-up in women with PCOS cohort were young-onset diabetes.

Conclusion: Women diagnosed with PCOS at a younger age have the highest relative risk of developing diabetes, suggesting frequent glycemic status screening is required to detect diabetes at an early stage.

Keywords: Chinese; Diabetes mellitus; Incidence; Polycystic ovary syndrome; Young-onset diabetes.