Abstract Background Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) is a global scale problem, closely related to genetic and environmental factors, such as aging, family history, diet, lack of physical exercise, physical inactivity and obesity, which contribute to the increase in its prevalence. Methods 191 participants (EG) with T2DM with the average of 70.3 years (SD = 8.3) and 36 with pre-diabetes (CG) with an average of 62 years (SD = 10.3) who participated in clinical trials at Clinical Research Unit in Cardiology of Coimbra Hospital and Universitary Centre without cognitive difficulties, were divided in 5 different clusters. These were established based on six different variables: body mass index (BMI), age of each individual, age at diagnosis of DMT2, glycated haemoglobin value (HbA1c), homeostatic model that estimates the function of β cells (HOMA2-B) and insulin resistance (HOMA2-IR). Results Cluster 1 presented pre-diabetic individuals (15.9%), while diabetic individuals were divided into clusters 2 (1.8%), 3 (17.6%), 4 (21.1%) and 5 (43.6%). Regarding the study of the prevalence of previous cardiovascular events, the majority of individuals present in the different clusters had history of acute myocardial infarction (AMI). For the prevalence of microvascular complications, only chronic kidney disease (CKD) was found in the vast majority of different groups. It was observed a dependency relationship between previous AMI and CKD in clusters 3 (P = 5.16E-5; P < 0.05), 4 (P = 0.0004; P < 0.05) and 5 (P = 0.0023; P < 0.05). Conclusions It was possible to create different clusters in a sample of the Portuguese population and to observe the existence of dependency relationships between different previous cardiovascular events and microvascular complications.