Proteomics‐enabled learning machine algorithms enhance the prediction of cardiovascular diseases in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus

Background and aims

Estimating the risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) complications in type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) patients is critical in the medical decision‐making process. This study aimed to use a machine learning technique combined with proteomics to develop personalized models for predicting CVD in patients with T2DM.

Methods and results

In total, 874 patients with T2DM and 2,920 Olink proteins obtained from the UK Biobank were used in this study. Proteins were screened using Cox regression and LASSO regression. A basic model containing clinical features and a full model combining proteome and clinical features were constructed using the random survival forest algorithm. The area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve (AUC) was used to evaluate the predictive performance of the models and compare them with other CVD predictive models. Compared with the basic model, the full model performed better in predicting CVD, with time‐dependent AUCs of 0.81 (3 years), 0.74 (5 years) and 0.74 (10 years) (0.77, 0.69 and 0.67). We calculated the risk scores of the Framingham, ASCVD and Score2‐Diabetes models. The results revealed that the prediction performance of the full model was also better than that of the abovementioned models. In terms of differentiation accuracy, the results of the net reclassification improvement index and integrated discrimination improvement index showed that the full model can identify high‐risk individuals more accurately (accuracy rate: 79% vs. 69%).

Conclusions

Proteomics can be used to predict cardiovascular complications in diabetic patients. It is also necessary to consider the applicability of the model due to the limitations of the sample size and the constraints of proteomics in clinical applications.