Abstract
The Feel4Diabetes program was comprised of a community-based screening and a two-year intervention phase aiming to prevent type 2 diabetes (T2D) in families at risk for diabetes across Europe. The current work aimed to identify the socio-demographic characteristics and body weight perceptions of participants who benefitted the most, achieving at least a 5% reduction in body weight, waist circumference and glycaemic indices (fasting plasma glucose, insulin, glycosylated haemoglobin levels), over two-year period. Following a two-stage screening procedure, 2294 high-risk parents were randomly allocated to standard care or more intensive intervention. The participants who benefitted most were living in Southern (OR 2.39–3.67, p < 0.001) and Eastern Europe (OR 1.55–2.47, p < 0.05), received more intensive intervention (OR 1.53–1.90, p = 0.002) and were younger (<40 years old) adults (OR 1.48–1.51, p < 0.05). Furthermore, individuals with tertiary education (OR 2.06, p < 0.001), who were unemployed (OR 1.62–1.68, p < 0.05) and perceived their body weight to be higher than normal (OR 1.58–3.00, p < 0.05) were more likely to benefit from the program. Lastly, males were more likely to show improvements in their glycaemic profiles compared to females (OR 1.40, p = 0.024). These findings point out the regions in Europe and the sociodemographic profile of individuals that benefitted the most in the current study, highlighting the need to prioritise regions in greater need for such interventions and also tailor future interventions to the characteristics and perceptions of the target populations.
Highlights
Ten percent of the global population over 25 years of age suffers from type 2 diabetes (T2D) [1].According to the International Diabetes Federation, it is projected that by 2030 more than 470 million people worldwide will be affected by prediabetes [2] and that by the year 2045 there will be about700 million T2D patients [3]
The study participants had a mean age of 42.9 ± 7.6 years, a mean body weight of 80.5 ± 18.5 kg, a mean Body mass index (BMI) of 28.5 ± 5.7 kg/m2 and a mean Waist circumference (WC) of 94.4 ± 7.6 cm
The only exception was the region of residence, since the percentage of study participants living in southern Europe was higher in those that received the more intensive intervention compared to those that received standard care
Summary
Ten percent of the global population over 25 years of age suffers from type 2 diabetes (T2D) [1].According to the International Diabetes Federation, it is projected that by 2030 more than 470 million people worldwide will be affected by prediabetes [2] and that by the year 2045 there will be about700 million T2D patients [3]. Clinical trials have demonstrated the effectiveness of glycaemic control in reducing or delaying the long-term complications of T2D [4], the public health burden of the disease is still rising, posing direct and indirect financial overload on healthcare systems and on society overall. For these reasons, there is a need for successful and cost-effective T2D preventive program strategies. There is a disproportionally higher prevalence of T2D and its risk factors among certain population groups [5,6,7,8,9,10]. As EBRBs represent modifiable risk factors for T2D, any program aiming to prevent the occurrence of the disorder should primarily focus on groups with characteristics and behaviours that are linked to low SES
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