Impact of Lifestyle-Related Factors on All-Cause and Cause-Specific Mortality in Patients With Type 2 Diabetes: The Taichung Diabetes Study

OBJECTIVE: To examine whether combined lifestyle behaviors have an impact on all-cause and cause-specific mortality in patients aged 30–94 years with type 2 diabetes (T2DM). RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: Participants included 5,686 patients >30 years old with T2DM who were enrolled in a Diabetes Care Management Program at a medical center in central Taiwan before 2007. Lifestyle behaviors consisted of smoking, alcohol drinking, physical inactivity, and carbohydrate intake. The main outcomes were all-cause and cause-specific mortality. Cox proportional hazards models were used to examine the association between combined lifestyle behaviors and mortality. RESULTS: The mortality rate among men was 24.10 per 1,000 person-years, and that among women was 17.25 per 1,000 person-years. After adjusting for the traditional risk factors, we found that combined lifestyle behavior was independently associated with all-cause mortality and mortality due to diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. Patients with three or more points were at a 3.50-fold greater risk of all-cause mortality (95% CI 2.06–5.96) and a 4.94-fold (1.62–15.06), 4.24-fold (1.20–14.95), and 1.31-fold (0.39–4.41) greater risk of diabetes-specific, CVD-specific, and cancer-specific mortality, respectively, compared with patients with zero points. Among these associations, the combined lifestyle behavior was not significantly associated with cancer mortality. CONCLUSIONS: Combined lifestyle behavior is a strong predictor of all-cause and cause-specific mortality in patients with T2DM.