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Assessing the health-related quality of life in type 2 diabetes patients treated with insulin and oral antidiabetic agents

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Summary

Background

Assessing the quality of life (QOL) for patients with type 2 diabetes is an essential part of diabetes management, especially for the evaluation of new antidiabetic treatments and glucose monitoring technologies. Accordingly, the aim of this study was to assess QOL according to treatment types.

Methods

This cross-sectional study included 170 patients with type 2 diabetes from the region of Melk in Lower Austria. Of the patients 61 used only oral antidiabetic agents (OAD) and 109 patients were treated with insulin (with or without OAD). The QOL was assessed in patients using sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 inhibitors (SGLT2 inhibitors). Among the 170 patients with type 2 diabetes 95 used SGLT2 inhibitors. The World Health Organization Quality of Life BREF (WHOQOL-BREF) assessment was used to assess QOL among these patients. The Mann–Whitney U-test was utilized in this study and a P value <0.05 was considered statistically significant.

Results

Regarding the 170 participants, most were male (58.82%) and the mean glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) level was 55.46 ± 12.30 mmol/mol (7.2%). The WHOQOL-BREF scores among type 2 diabetes patients were relatively high, which reflect a good QOL and the mean physical, psychological, social and environmental domain scores were 64.53 ± 20.15, 71.29 ± 18.08, 70.10 ± 20.08, and 84.419 ± 11.22 SD, respectively. There were no statistically significant differences in WHOQOL scores of the domains between the insulin-treated group and OAD group and between the group treated with SGLT2 inhibitors and the group not treated with SGLT2 inhibitors.

Conclusion

This study showed no QOL distinctions between treatment groups in patients with type 2 diabetes; however, a large cohort study is needed to examine these groups further.

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Abbreviations

ADDQoL:

Audit of diabetes-dependent quality of life

BMI:

Body mass index

DMQoL:

Diabetes-specific quality of life questionnaire module

DQOL-BCI:

Diabetes quality of life-brief clinical inventory

DSQOLS:

Diabetes-specific quality of life scale

EQ-5D:

European quality of life group

HbA1c:

Glycated hemoglobin

OAD:

Oral only antidiabetic agents

QOL:

Quality of life

SGLT2 inhibitors:

Sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 inhibitors

WHOQOL-100:

World Health Organization quality of life-100

WHOQOL-BREF:

World Health Organization Quality of Life-BREF

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Internal Medicine, Center for Diabetes and Metabolic Diseases, Melk, Austria

    Nawras Al-Taie, Delia Maftei & Harald Stingl

  2. Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism, Department of Internal Medicine III, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

    Alexandra Kautzky-Willer & Michael Krebs

Authors
  1. Nawras Al-Taie
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  2. Delia Maftei
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  3. Alexandra Kautzky-Willer
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  4. Michael Krebs
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  5. Harald Stingl
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Correspondence to Nawras Al-Taie.

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Conflict of interest

N. Al-Taie, D. Maftei, A. Kautzky-Willer, M. Krebs, and H. Stingl declare that they have no conflict of interest regarding the publication of this article.

Ethical standards

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1975 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. The ethics committee of the Lower Austria region approved the study on 17 August 2017. Study registration: ISRCTN16494373. Informed consent was obtained from all patients included in the study.

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Al-Taie, N., Maftei, D., Kautzky-Willer, A. et al. Assessing the health-related quality of life in type 2 diabetes patients treated with insulin and oral antidiabetic agents. Wien Klin Wochenschr 133, 167–172 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00508-019-01573-0

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