Analysis of detrended fluctuation function derived from continuous glucose monitoring may assist in distinguishing latent autoimmune diabetes in adults from T2DM

BACKGROUND: We aimed to explore the performance of detrended fluctuation function (DFF) in distinguishing patients with latent autoimmune diabetes in adults (LADA) from type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) with glucose data derived from continuous glucose monitoring. METHODS: In total, 71 LADA and 152 T2DM patients were enrolled. Correlations between glucose parameters including time in range (TIR), mean glucose, standard deviation (SD), mean amplitude of glucose excursions (MAGE), coefficient of variation (CV), DFF and fasting and 2-hour postprandial C-peptide (FCP, 2hCP) were analyzed and compared. Receiver operating characteristics curve (ROC) analysis and 10-fold cross-validation were employed to explore and validate the performance of DFF in diabetes classification respectively. RESULTS: Patients with LADA had a higher mean glucose, lower TIR, greater SD, MAGE and CV than those of T2DM (P<0.001). DFF achieved the strongest correlation with FCP (r = -0.705, P<0.001) as compared with TIR (r = 0.485, P<0.001), mean glucose (r = -0.337, P<0.001), SD (r = -0.645, P<0.001), MAGE (r = -0.663, P<0.001) and CV (r = -0.639, P<0.001). ROC analysis showed that DFF yielded the greatest area under the curve (AUC) of 0.862 (sensitivity: 71.2%, specificity: 84.9%) in differentiating LADA from T2DM as compared with TIR, mean glucose, SD, MAGE and CV (AUC: 0.722, 0.650, 0.800, 0.820 and 0.807, sensitivity: 71.8%, 47.9%, 63.6%, 72.7% and 78.8%, specificity: 67.8%, 83.6%, 80.9%, 80.3% and 72.4%, respectively). The kappa test indicated a good consistency between DFF and the actual diagnosis (kappa = 0.551, P<0.001). Ten-fold cross-validation showed a stable performance of DFF with a mean AUC of 0.863 (sensitivity: 78.8%, specificity: 77.8%) in 10 training sets and a mean AUC of 0.866 (sensitivity: 80.9%, specificity: 84.1%) in 10 test sets. CONCLUSIONS: A more violent glucose fluctuation pattern was marked in patients with LADA than T2DM. We first proposed the possible role of DFF in distinguishing patients with LADA from T2DM in our study population, which may assist in diabetes classification.