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Risk of type 2 diabetes mellitus in catholic priests compared with general public

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Abstract

Aims

Although Catholic priests have a life of discipline with many responsibilities, there has been little research on the health effects of their lifestyle. Analysis of disease prevalence in priests will help elucidate the influence of religious life and occupational characteristics on the occurrence of diabetes. This retrospective study was performed to examine the differences in the prevalence of diabetes and prediabetes between Catholic priests and the general population.

Methods

The study population comprised 1845 Catholic priests aged 31–80 years who visited the health promotion centers of three university hospitals in Korea between 2010 and 2019. Controls consisted of 1801 adult non-clerics aged 31–80 years who underwent health checkups at the screening center during the same period. Logistic regression analysis was performed to compare the differences in the rates of diabetes and prediabetes between the priest and control groups.

Result

Priests were younger and had lower rates of smoking, drinking alcohol, and hypertension compared with the control group. However, metabolic markers, such as BMI, waist circumference, body fat mass, insulin, HbA1c, and lipid profiles, were significantly higher in the priest group than the control group (all p < 0.05). After adjusting for covariates, the priest group had a significantly higher likelihood of having diabetes (OR = 1.651, 95% CI 1.146–2.379) or prediabetes (OR = 3.270, 95% CI 2.471–4.327) compared with the controls.

Conclusions

This study showed that Catholic priests have higher risks of diabetes and prediabetes compared with the general population, and these risks increase with age. Further large-scale prospective studies are required to confirm these relationships.

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Data availability and materials

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Funding

This research was supported by grant of the Institute of Clinical Medicine Research in the Yeouido St. Mary’s hospital, Catholic University of Korea.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Family Medicine, Yeouido St. Mary’s Hospital, College of Medicine, The Catholic University of Korea, 10, 63-Ro, Yeongdeungpo-Gu, Seoul, 07345, Republic of Korea

    Youngmi Eun, Sun Myeong Ock, Ju Hye Chung & Se Jin Park

  2. Department of Family Medicine, St. Vincent’s Hospital, College of Medicine, The Catholic University of Korea, Seoul, Republic of Korea

    Se-Hong Kim

  3. Department of Family Medicine, Seoul St. Mary’s Hospital, College of Medicine, The Catholic University of Korea, Seoul, Republic of Korea

    Churlmin Kim

  4. The Catholic University of Korea, Seoul, Republic of Korea

    Min-Kyun Im

  5. Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science, Soongsil University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

    Kyung-do Han

Authors
  1. Youngmi Eun
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  4. Ju Hye Chung
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  6. Churlmin Kim
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  7. Min-Kyun Im
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  8. Kyung-do Han
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Contributions

SMO, SHK, KDH and YME participated in the design of the study, data collection, performed the statistical analysis and drafted the manuscript. JHC, CMK, SJP and MKI supervising the study and participated in draft review. All authors have read and approved the final version of the manuscript and agree with the order of presentation of the authors.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sun Myeong Ock.

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Conflict of interest

All authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Ethical approval

The study protocol was approved by the Clinical Research Review Board of the Catholic medical center of Korea (IRB No: XC20RIDI0058) and conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. Since data were anonymous and used in aggregated form, no subjects’ informed consent was needed according to local ethic committee indications.

Informed consent

The study protocol was approved by the Clinical Research Review Board of the Catholic medical center of Korea (IRB No: XC20RIDI0058) and conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. Since data were anonymous and used in aggregated form, no subjects’ informed consent was needed according to local ethic committee indications.

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Eun, Y., Ock, S.M., Kim, SH. et al. Risk of type 2 diabetes mellitus in catholic priests compared with general public. Acta Diabetol 60, 655–661 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00592-023-02041-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00592-023-02041-y

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