The Association of Vitamin K2 Level with the Glycaemic Status in Type 2 Diabetic Patients: A Case-Control Study

Objectives: The target of this work was to investigate vitamin K2 level link to glycaemic status in type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) patients.

Methodology: Sixty T2DM patients were divided into 30 uncontrolled T2DM (group I), 30 controlled T2DM (group II) patients and 30 non-diabetic subjects as the control group. Vitamin K2 level, fasting insulin, homeostasis model assessment insulin resistance (HOMA-IR), fasting blood glucose (FBG), 2-h postprandial blood glucose (PPG), glycosylated haemoglobin (HbA1c) and fasting lipids were documented. Waist circumference (WC) was measured and body mass index (BMI) was calculated.

Results: A highly significant difference between groups was observed in vitamin K2 level (P < 0.001) being 1.61 ± 0.56 ng/ml, 2.04 ± 0.59 ng/ml and 2.96 ± 0.82 ng/ml for groups I, II and III, respectively. Among diabetics, a negative correlation was reported between serum vitamin K2 and FBG (r -0.428), 2-h PPBG (r -0.319), HbA1c (r -0.268), fasting insulin (r -0.49), HOMA-IR (r -0.5), total cholesterol (T-cholesterol) (r -0.335) and LDL-C (r -0.296) with P < 0.05. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve emphasized the utility of the discriminated potentiality of serum vitamin K2 as a biomarker for uncontrolled hyperglycaemia in T2DM. The multivariate linear regression has shown that FBG is the only significant independent predictor of serum levels of vitamin K2.

Conclusions: In T2DM patients, serum vitamin K2 level was significantly lower, especially with uncontrolled hyperglycaemia. This suggests that vitamin K2 level has an association with the glycaemic status in T2DM.