IS DIABETES KNOWLEDGE ASSOCIATED WITH HEALTH-RELATED QUALITY OF LIFE AMONG ENGLISH-SPEAKING SUBJECTS WITH DIABETES IN SINGAPORE?

Author(s)

Xu-Hao Zhang, BSc, Graduate Research Student1, Hwee-Lin Wee, BSc(Pharm), Research Coordinator2, Kevin Tan, MD, Vice President3, Hwee-Huan Tan, MD, Director4, Julian Thumboo, FRCP, Assoc. Prof. / Senior Consultant2, Shu-Chuen Li, PhD, Associate Professor11National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore; 2 Singapore General Hospital, Singapore, Singapore; 3 Diabetic Society of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore; 4 Singhealth Polyclinics, Singapore, Singapore

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate if diabetes knowledge is associated with health-related quality of life (HRQoL)among English-speaking subjects with diabetes in Singapore. METHODS: English-speaking subjects (aged >21) with self-reported diabetes were recruited by convenience sampling at a public event organized by Diabetic Society of Singapore to commemorate the World Diabetes Day. Correlation between diabetes knowledge (measured using the General Diabetes Knowledge Test (GDKT), range 0-100) and HRQoL (measured using the Audit of Diabetes-dependent Quality of life (ADDQoL), range 0-100; EQ-5D, range –0.594 to 1 and the SF-6D, range 0.26-1) were studied using Pearson correlation coefficients. The relationship between diabetes knowledge and HRQoL was studied using three separate multiple linear regression (MLR) models with HRQoL scores as dependent variable and GDKT score as independent variable while adjusting for age, gender, ethnicity, education, housing type, smoking status and presence of acute/ chronic medical conditions and diabetes complications. RESULTS: Data from 42 subjects with complete responses were analyzed (mean (SD) age: 53.0(9.61) years, 45.0% female, 90.0% with >6 years of education, 64.3% with other chronic medical conditions, 40.5% with diabetes complications). Mean (SD) GDKT, ADDQoL, EQ-5D and SF-6D scores were 33.1(3.53), 46.9(18.56), 0.9(0.15) and 0.8(0.14) respectively. Correlations between diabetes knowledge and ADDQoL, EQ-5D and SF-6D scores were 0.26, 0.30 and 0.21 respectively. Although none of the independent variables was associated significantly with HRQoL scores in any of the MLR models (p>0.05), a trend of association was nevertheless observed. CONCLUSIONS: Our results showed diabetes knowledge to be weakly correlated with both diabetes-specific and generic health related quality of life. In addition, diabetes knowledge may be positively associated with diabetes-specific HRQoL but further studies utilizing larger sample size would be required to confirm the observation.

Conference/Value in Health Info

2006-03, ISPOR Asia Pacific 2006, Shanghai, China

Code

PDB5

Topic

Patient-Centered Research

Topic Subcategory

Patient-reported Outcomes & Quality of Life Outcomes

Disease

Diabetes/Endocrine/Metabolic Disorders

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