RESEARCH ARTICLE Work Disability among Employees with Diabetes: Latent Class Analysis of Risk Factors in Three Prospective Cohort Studies

Background Studies of work disability in diabetes have examined diabetes as a homogeneous disease. We sought to identify subgroups among persons with diabetes based on potential risk fac-tors for work disability. Methods Participants were 2,445 employees with diabetes from three prospective cohorts (the Finn-ish Public Sector study, the GAZEL study, and the Whitehall II study). Work disability was ascertained via linkage to registers of sickness absence and disability pensions during a follow-up of 4 years. Study-specific latent class analysis was used to identify subgroups according to prevalent comorbid disease and health-risk behaviours. Study-specific associ-ations with work disability at follow-up were pooled using fixed-effects meta-analysis. Results Separate latent class analyses for men and women in each cohort supported a two-class solution with one subgroup (total n = 1,086; 44.4%) having high prevalence of chroni