One-Hour Glucose, Mortality, and Risk of Diabetes: A 44-Year Prospective Study in Men

T wo-hour postload glucose measurement is currently recommended for early detection of diabetes. The less time-consuming 1-hour postload glucose measurement (1-hour glucose) has been reported to predict cardiovascular mortality and Medicare expenditure and to be associated with carotid intimamedia thickness. Recently, 1-hour glucose has also aroused interest in the prediction of diabetes both in United States and Finnish cohorts and in the assessment of risk for chronic kidney disease. However, the status of 1-hour glucose as a risk-predicting tool is still far from established. Because blood 1-hour glucose was used to assess cardiovascular risk in early midlife in the Helsinki Businessmen Study during the 1960s, we had a unique opportunity to evaluate how this relatively simple test in conjunction with body mass index (BMI) would predict mortality and development of diabetes over 44 years of follow-up.