Cited by 158Diabetes Management and ResearchDiabetes Treatment and ManagementDiabetes, Cardiovascular Risks, and Lipoproteins

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 58 of the 58 references it cites were found in a registry or an index; 3 of the 74 sources its claims cite were checked for support.

Glycemic variability and cardiovascular disease in patients with type 2 diabetes

Open access
Martinez, Marcela, Santamarina, Jimena, Pavesi, Adrian, Musso, Carla, Umpierrez, Guillermo E·2021·BMJ Open Diabetes Research & Care

Abstract

Glycated hemoglobin is currently the gold standard for assessment of long-term glycemic control and response to medical treatment in patients with diabetes. Glycated hemoglobin, however, does not address fluctuations in blood glucose. Glycemic variability (GV) refers to fluctuations in blood glucose levels. Recent clinical data indicate that GV is associated with increased risk of hypoglycemia, microvascular and macrovascular complications, and mortality in patients with diabetes, independently of glycated hemoglobin level. The use of continuous glucose monitoring devices has markedly improved the assessment of GV in clinical practice and facilitated the assessment of GV as well as hypoglycemia and hyperglycemia events in patients with diabetes. We review current concepts on the definition and assessment of GV and its association with cardiovascular complications in patients with type 2 diabetes.

Overview

AI snapshot

Written from the paper’s full text.

TL;DR

This review summarizes definitions and assessment of glycemic variability (GV) and evidence linking GV to cardiovascular complications in type 2 diabetes, noting associations independent of HbA1c in many studies but not all. It concludes that clear data confirming GV as an independent risk factor for diabetic complications are still lacking and calls for prospective randomized CGM trials.

Key findings

  • GV refers to blood glucose swings, including hypoglycemia and postprandial hyperglycemia; CGM metrics include time in range 70–180 mg/dL, time above/below range, and GV expressed as coefficient of variation (CV), with a recommended CV target ≤36%. The International Consensus on Use of Continuous Glucose Monitoring recommended CV as the preferred measure and SD as secondary.
  • A meta-analysis by Gorst et al. found that in patients with T2D, higher HbA1c variability was associated with renal disease (risk ratio 1.34, 95% CI 1.15 to 1.57), macrovascular events (1.21, 1.06 to 1.38), cardiovascular disease (1.27, 1.15 to 1.40), and mortality (1.34, 1.18 to 1.53).
  • In ADVANCE, HbA1c visit-to-visit variation was associated with increased risk of vascular events (p=0.01, HR 1.64, 1.05–2.55), macrovascular events (p=0.02), and mortality (p<0.001, HR 3.31, 1.57–6.98); fasting glucose visit-to-visit variation was associated with cardiovascular events (p<0.001, HR 2.70, 1.65–4.42) and macrovascular and microvascular events.
  • In DEVOTE 2, high day-to-day fasting GV was associated with severe hypoglycemia (HR 4.11, 3.15–5.35), MACE (HR 1.36, 1.12–1.65), and all-cause mortality (HR 1.58, 1.23–2.03). However, HEART2D, DIGAMI 2, and FLAT-SUGAR reported no association or no significant difference in cardiovascular outcomes despite GV changes.

Methods

  • Narrative review of current concepts on the definition and assessment of GV and its association with cardiovascular complications in patients with type 2 diabetes.
  • Synthesizes experimental, clinical, observational, meta-analytic, and post-hoc trial evidence, including a table of studies assessing GV and cardiovascular outcomes in T2D, acute coronary syndrome, and acute myocardial infarction populations.
  • No systematic search strategy, primary data collection, or formal risk-of-bias assessment is described.

Limitations

  • The paper states there is currently no consensus on metrics to assess GV; heterogeneity between studies, including different GV metrics, limits understanding of relationships between GV and diabetes complications.
  • The paper states that clear data confirming GV as an independent risk factor of diabetic complications are still lacking, and future prospective randomized clinical trials using CGM devices are needed.
  • Evident from the text: this is a narrative review, and the cited studies vary in populations, GV measures (SMBG, CGM, HbA1c, fasting glucose), follow-up duration, and outcomes, with some reporting null associations.

Model-written summary. Check it against the paper before relying on it.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1136/bmjdrc-2020-002032

Cites

58 of 58 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Nothing to recompute.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

64 Not checked yet · 7 No basis given · 5 Own interpretation · 1 Supported so far · 1 Partly supported · accuracy not yet measured

Verify all 71 references — free account

Show all 51 claims

  • Probably not a substantial claim. 5
  • It may state two separate claims as one. 24
27 of 27
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    HbA1c is the gold standard for assessment of long-term glycemic control and response to medical treatment in patients with diabetes.

    “Glycated hemoglobin is currently the gold standard for assessment of long-term glycemic control and response to medical treatment in patients with diabetes.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    HbA1c does not address fluctuations in blood glucose.

    “Glycated hemoglobin, however, does not address fluctuations in blood glucose.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    There is currently no consensus on the use of metrics to assess glycemic variability.

    “There is currently no consensus on the use of metrics to assess GV.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Mechanistic findings from in vitro and animal models of glucose fluctuation apply to the pathogenesis of vascular damage in human type 2 diabetes.

    “In vitro studies in human umbilical vein endothelial cells reported that increases in nitrotyrosine and 8-hydroxydeoxyguanosine, markers of oxidative stress, were more pronounced when they were exposed to intermittent high glucose than in constant high glucose.24”
    “In an animal model, Ying and colleagues41 evaluated markers of tissue oxidative stress in heart ventricles and found that blood glucose fluctuation accelerated cardiac injury via intracellular signal transduction pathways including protein kinase B (AKT), key enzyme in cell death.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Poor glycemic control is positively associated with acute and long-term complications of diabetes.

    “based on the positive association between poor glycemic control and acute and long-term complications of diabetes”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Reduction in HbA1c leads to lower rates of diabetic complications.

    “that reduction in HbA1c leads to lower rates in diabetic complications.”
6 of 6

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

Each contradiction between two passages listed here was confirmed by an independent check.

1 of 1

Citations

Cites

Show all 58 references

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Metadata

Authors
Martinez, M., Santamarina, J., Pavesi, A., Musso, C., & Umpierrez, G. E.
Affiliations
  • Fundacion Favaloro Hospital Universitario (AR)
  • Diabetes and Endocrinology, Favaloro Foundation University Hospital, Buenos Aires, Federal District, Argentina
  • Emory University (US)
Corresponding author
Umpierrez, Guillermo E
Venue
BMJ Open Diabetes Research & Care
Publisher
BMJ
Published
2021-03
Volume
9
Issue
1
Pages
e002032
ISSN
2052-4897 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W3138553431
Cited by
155
References
58
Citations by year
2026: 23 · 2025: 39 · 2024: 37 · 2023: 32 · 2022: 19 · 2021: 5
FWCI
3.56
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • BMJ Open Diabetes Research & Care (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
Funders
  • National Institutes of Health (UL1TR002378)
  • National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences
Topics
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism › Diabetes Management and Research
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism › Diabetes Treatment and Management
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism › Diabetes, Cardiovascular Risks, and Lipoproteins
Keywords
glycemic variability, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, HbA1c, continuous glucose monitoring, hypoglycemia, hyperglycemia, microvascular complications, macrovascular complications, mortality
MeSH terms
Blood Glucose, Cardiovascular Diseases, Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2, Glycated Hemoglobin, Humans, Blood Glucose Self-Monitoring

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

A language model drew the claims from the paper on 2026-10-09, under version 3 of the claim definition (model deepseek-v4.1-flash, prompt extract-v3).

A second model labelled each claim on 2026-10-09 (model jev-1.13-20260917, definition revision gold-guideline-v0.2).

Cited sources are checked with a language model’s help (gpt-6-sol).

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review