Evaluation of the DAT angle in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus: A cross-sectional study

Introduction: Palmar dermatoglyphics serve as permanent biological records of genetic and prenatal developmental events. Investigations exploring palmar parameters, specifically the DAT angle, as potential indicators for type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) have yielded highly inconsistent results across different ethnic populations.Aim and Objectives: This study aimed to evaluate and compare the DAT angle in patients with non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM) against healthy controls.Materials and Methods: A prospective cross-sectional study was conducted with 200 subjects aged 40–75 years, consisting of 100 NIDDM patients and 100 healthy controls (50 males and 50 females per group). Palmar prints were captured using the standard ink method. The DAT angle, formed by joining digital triradii ‘d’ and ‘a’ with the axial triradius ‘t’, was measured and evaluated using Student's independent samples t-test.Results: No statistically significant differences in mean DAT angles were observed between cases and controls across any sex or hand side. For combined sexes, the mean right-hand DAT angle was 56.98 ± 7.89° in cases versus 57.40 ± 5.37° in controls (p = 0.66). The left-hand angle was 57.19 ± 6.39° in cases versus 57.68 ± 5.20° in controls (p = 0.55). Male and female subgroup comparisons similarly yielded non-significant differences (p > 0.05).Conclusion: The DAT angle alone exhibits limited utility as a discriminatory screening marker for identifying susceptibility to T2DM in the studied population. Future multi-centric studies utilizing a combination of multiple dermatoglyphic parameters are required.