ESPEYB15 10 Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus Psychology and quality of life (3 abstracts)
Baylor College of Medicine/Texas Children’s Hospital, Houston, TX, USA
To read the full abstract: Diabetes Care. 2017;40:1002-1009
Quality of life (QOL) measures have increasingly been considered as end-points of medical interventions. Both general QOL and health- and disease-specific quality of life can be assessed using well defined and validated questionnaires. The TEENs study is an international, cross-sectional study of youth with T1DM. 5,887 participants were followed in 20 countries across 5 continents. To assess disease and health related quality of life (D-HRQOL), participants completed the PedsQL Diabetes Module 3.0. Interestingly, the lower the HbA1c, the better the quality of life in youth and young adults with T1DM. Three diabetes-management behaviors were also related to optimal glycemic control, which represent potentially modifiable factors for clinical interventions to improve D-HRQOL as well as glycemic control.
These data show that good metabolic control not only improves measures of morbidity, comorbidity and mortality, but also day-today living, and namely quality of life. Overall, efforts to achieve good metabolic control pays off, both in the short and long term, and for psychosocial wellbeing as well as in physical and somatic health.