Cardiovascular Risk Assessment in a Cohort of Italian Patients With Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus (CARDT1)

Overview

This is a multicenter prospective collection of data with diagnostic procedures different from standard clinical care in a specific cohort of patients, aimed to evaluate cardiovascular risk stratification with the European Society of Cardiology (ESC)/European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) guidelines and "The Steno Type 1 Risk Engine" algorithm. The correlation between CVD risk, atherosclerosis, and microvascular complications of diabetes (retinopathy, nephropathy, and neuropathy) will then be evaluated, and the impact of glycemic variability and other glucose metrics on vascular damage will be characterized. The investigators plan to enroll at least 200 consecutive type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) patients who meet all the inclusion criteria and none of exclusion criteria.

Patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus will be identified in the electronic medical records, and their clinical, anthropometric, and laboratory data, including markers of glycemic variability and other blood glucose metrics, will be collected. Cardiovascular risk will then be assessed using the stratification proposed by ESC/EASD and The Steno Type 1 Risk Engine. As suggested by the guidelines, according to cardiovascular risk, participants will perform a coronary CT scan in order to investigate coronary anatomy, to study the atherosclerotic plaque morphology, to assess high-risk plaque characteristics, and in case of obstructive coronary artery disease, to investigate myocardial perfusion by adenosine infusion to assess both ischemia and microcirculation dysfunction. Noninvasive B-mode ultrasonography of the supra-aortic trunks will assess for signs of carotid atherosclerosis (i.e., carotid intima media thickness - c-IMT - and carotid plaques). Ankle-arm index (ABI), a noninvasive cardiovascular bio-marker, will provide information on peripheral arterial disease. Endothelial function will be also assessed using the ENDO-PAT 2000 instrument which measures endothelial dysfunction with a peripheral arterial tone detection method. For the purpose of assessing participants' nutritional habits, participants will be asked to complete the Food Frequency Questionnaire (FFQ) the week prior the visit; once the FFQ will be completed an interview with the nutritionist will be scheduled in order to review and to ascertain its completeness; in addition, the PREDIMED questionnaire for calculating the Mediterranean Diet Adherence Screener score (MEDAS) will be administered to assess adherence to the Mediterranean diet. An interview with the psychologist will be planned. During that visit the participant will receive information about the rationale of the study regarding psychological aspects, the questionnaires that will be administered and how to fill them out correctly online via the Qualtrics EU platform. The Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) test will then be administered. Finally, biological samples will be collected for future genomic and epigenetic analyses associated with different cardiovascular disease (CVD) phenotypes and outcomes.