Global variability in diabetes mellitus and its association with body weight and primary healthcare support in 49 low- and middle-income developing countries
Diabetic Medicine, 08/03/2012
Liu L et al. – There are significant variations in prevalence of diabetes and primary healthcare support for diabetes across low– and middle–income countries. Aggressively preventing abnormal body weight and improving healthcare support may play a pivotal role in ameliorating the unfavourable epidemic of diabetes in developing countries.
Methods- Diabetes mellitus was defined by individuals' self-report of a physician diagnosis of diabetes.
- BMI is the weight (kg)/the square of the height (m).
- Healthcare support was assessed using clinical treatment status and whether patients with diabetes followed prescribed behaviour changes to control diabetes.
- Associations of diabetes with BMI and diabetes treatment status were analysed cross-sectionally.
- A total of 215898 participants were included in the analysis.
- Age-adjusted prevalence of diabetes ranged from 0.27% (Mali) to 15.54% (Mauritius).
- Participants who were underweight (BMI < 18.5 kg/m2), overweight (BMI 25-29.9 kg/m2) and obese (BMI ≥ 30 kg/m2) were significantly associated with odds of having diabetes as compared with those who were of normal weight (BMI 18.5-24.9 k/m2), with corresponding values of multivariate adjusted odds ratios (95% CI) of 1.15 (1.07-1.24), 1.56 (1.44-1.68) and 2.35 (2.17-2.61), respectively.
- The overall untreated rate of those with diabetes mellitus was 9.6% in the total sample.
- Patients with underweight had the highest diabetes untreated rate, followed by those with normal weight, overweight and obesity.
