Frontiers in Physiology (Aug 2021)

Development and Validation of a Prediction Model for Elevated Arterial Stiffness in Chinese Patients With Diabetes Using Machine Learning

  • Qingqing Li,
  • Wenhui Xie,
  • Liping Li,
  • Lijing Wang,
  • Qinyi You,
  • Lu Chen,
  • Jing Li,
  • Yilang Ke,
  • Jun Fang,
  • Libin Liu,
  • Huashan Hong

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3389/fphys.2021.714195
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 12

Abstract

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BackgroundArterial stiffness assessed by pulse wave velocity is a major risk factor for cardiovascular diseases. The incidence of cardiovascular events remains high in diabetics. However, a clinical prediction model for elevated arterial stiffness using machine learning to identify subjects consequently at higher risk remains to be developed.MethodsLeast absolute shrinkage and selection operator and support vector machine-recursive feature elimination were used for feature selection. Four machine learning algorithms were used to construct a prediction model, and their performance was compared based on the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve metric in a discovery dataset (n = 760). The model with the best performance was selected and validated in an independent dataset (n = 912) from the Dryad Digital Repository (https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.m484p). To apply our model to clinical practice, we built a free and user-friendly web online tool.ResultsThe predictive model includes the predictors: age, systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, and body mass index. In the discovery cohort, the gradient boosting-based model outperformed other methods in the elevated arterial stiffness prediction. In the validation cohort, the gradient boosting model showed a good discrimination capacity. A cutoff value of 0.46 for the elevated arterial stiffness risk score in the gradient boosting model resulted in a good specificity (0.813 in the discovery data and 0.761 in the validation data) and sensitivity (0.875 and 0.738, respectively) trade-off points.ConclusionThe gradient boosting-based prediction system presents a good classification in elevated arterial stiffness prediction. The web online tool makes our gradient boosting-based model easily accessible for further clinical studies and utilization.

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