Correlation Between Vitamin D3, Atherogenic Indices of Plasma and Cardiometabolic Biomarkers in Diabetic Patients

Abstract

Background: Cardiometabolic disease is a cluster of interconnected cardiovascular and metabolic disorders. These include obesity, insulin resistance, hypertension, heart disease and type 2 diabetes. In this study, focus was to identify correlation between serum vitamin D3 levels along with Atherogenic Indices of Plasma (AIP) and cardio metabolic biomarkers with a purpose to assess as potential indicators of the cardio metabolic disease risk in the type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) patients. Methods: The study was a cross-sectional investigation conducted in a total of 105 patients with diabetes mellitus in Islamabad region of Pakistan. Participants were selected randomly with an age range of 45-79 years. The clinical data sets were analyzed using Pearson correlation, Kolmogorov-Smirnov and independent t-test. Results: Vitamin D3 showed a strong inverse correlation with the total cholesterol (r=-0.483, p<0.01) and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C, r=-0.471, p < 0.01). This indicated that higher vitamin D3 levels are associated with the lower levels of these lipids. Additionally, there was a positive correlation with high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) levels. Significant inverse relationship was noticed between vitamin D3 and triglycerides (r=-0.595, p<0.01). Correlation with systolic blood pressure (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) was not found to be significant. Vitamin D3 showed a strong negative correlation with AIP such as CRI-I (r=-0.595, p<0.01) and CRI-II (r=-0.582, p<0.01) indicating the role in reducing cardiovascular risk. An inverse relationship between vitamin D3 levels and AIP in diabetics was found. Lower levels of serum vitamin D3 were associated with higher AIP, suggesting a link between vitamin D3 deficiency and atherogenic dyslipidemia in the population. Conclusion: Higher vitamin D3 levels are associated with favorable lipid profile, including lower total cholesterol, LDL-C, AIP along with higher HDL-C levels. Lower vitamin D3 levels were also linked to increased atherogenic dyslipidemia and adverse cardiometabolic biomarkers. Findings suggest that vitamin D3 may play a protective role in reducing the cardiovascular risk in individuals with diabetes.