Serum adiponectin levels predict the risk of coronary heart disease in Japanese patients with type 2 diabetes

AIMS/INTRODUCTION: An inverse association between adiponectin and coronary heart disease (CHD) has been found in Caucasians, but it is uncertain whether this association can be extrapolated to the East Asian population. The present study aimed to investigate whether serum adiponectin levels can predict CHD in Japanese patients with type 2 diabetes as observed in Caucasians. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This longitudinal study included 504 patients with type 2 diabetes (342 men and 162 women) who were admitted to Sumitomo Hospital between July 2005 and December 2006. We used Cox proportional hazard analysis to estimate the hazard ratio (HR) of CHD associated with serum adiponectin levels at baseline. RESULTS: During a median follow up of 5.7 years (2177 person‐years), 40 participants had new CHD and 10 had recurrent CHD. After multivariate adjustment, the highest compared with the lowest quartile of serum adiponectin levels had a significantly reduced risk of CHD (hazard ratio [HR] 0.35; 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.13–0.94; P = 0.017). The multivariate adjusted HR for the risk of CHD according to a doubling of adiponectin at baseline was 0.61 (95% CI 0.39–0.97; P = 0.037). CONCLUSIONS: High serum adiponectin levels are significantly associated with a lower risk of CHD in Japanese patients with type 2 diabetes. This association is independent of other well‐known CHD risk factors.