Novel Subgroups of Diabetes

A novel approach for precision medicine for diabetes involves classifying newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes patients into data-driven subphenotypes based on their clinical characteristics (e.g., age at diagnosis, body mass index, HbA1c, HOMA2-IR, HOMA2-B). These subphenotypes vary in their genetic profile, presentation, responses to antihyperglycemic medication and risk of diabetes-related complications. However, reasons such as unavailability of HOMA2 indices in routinely collected clinical data, scarcity of data on subphenotypes derived from non-European populations, non-replicable cut-points for clinical variables and hard cluster assignment ignoring multifactorial nature of diabetes, preclude the widespread translation of this phenotyping approach from cohort studies to clinical practice.

This is ongoing work with Zhongyu Li and Jiali Guo.

Publications

1. Li 2025 Diabetologia (Accepted) on translating subtypes from cohort studies to Epic Cosmos
2. Guo 2025 Diabetes Care (Accepted) on pathophysiological risk factors of subtypes in cohort studies.
3. Guo 2025 Journal of Diabetes and Its Complications on subtypes of newly diagnosed diabetes among youth
4. Varghese 2023 Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology Correspondence on Replicability of subphenotypes
5. Varghese 2023 Primary Care Diabetes Brief Report on Ethnic Differences of subphenotypes
6. Varghese 2021 Diabetes Technology & Therapeutics on CGM-derived profiles

Abstracts

1. Li 2025a ADA Scientific Sessions 2025 Oral Presentation on subtypes and cancer.
2. Li 2025b ADA Scientific Sessions 2025 Oral Presentation on subtypes and dementia.
3. Guo 2025 ADA Scientific Sessions 2025 Oral Presentation on pathophysiology of subtypes.
4. Varghese 2025 ADA Scientific Sessions 2025 Poster Presentation on trajectories of biomarkers prior to diabetes incidence.
5. Varghese 2025 AHA EPI/Lifestyle Oral Presentation on subtypes and cardiovascular disease.