Response to Comment on Tynjälä et al. Arterial Stiffness Predicts Mortality in Individuals With Type 1 Diabetes. Diabetes Care 2020;43:2266–2271

Abstract

We thank Gonzalez-Clemente et al. (1) for presenting an interesting perspective on arterial stiffness as a potential integrative risk factor for cardiovascular disease (CVD) in type 1 diabetes in the light of their findings in a cross-sectional cohort of 179 individuals (2). They demonstrated a strong correlation between aortic pulse wave velocity (PWV) and a CVD risk prediction score obtained from the Steno Type 1 Risk Engine (ST1RE) (3) and determined cutoff values for PWV as a marker of moderate/high (≥10%) and high (≥20%) risk of CVD in individuals with type 1 diabetes. In the FinnDiane Study, we recently showed an independent association between augmentation index (AIx), another marker of arterial stiffness, and all-cause mortality as well as a composite cardiovascular and/or diabetes-related cause of death in a prospective analysis of 906 individuals with type 1 diabetes (4). Although the longitudinal data on PWV in our cohort …