Influencing Factors of the Diabetes Distress among Chinese Patients with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus.

BACKGROUND: Patients with Diabetes Mellitus (DM) are required to have long-term treatment regimen and strict self-management, which thus might lead to the Diabetes Distress (DD). Patients' DD varies in different regions with different levels of medical conditions. For improving the treatment effect of the patients with the Type-2-Diabetes-Mellitus (T2DM), this study explores the influencing factors of the patients' DD in the regions where the medical treatment are at low level.

SUBJECTS AND METHODS: In this study, 167 adult patients with T2DM were selected from the People's Hospital of Jinhua city, an A-grade hospital of a small-mid-sized city in Eastern China. Based on these samples, the Diabetes Distress Scale with 17 items (DDS17) was adopted to measure the degree of patients' DD, and then regression analyses were carried out to investigate the influencing factors for their DD.

RESULTS: The T2DM patients with moderate and high levels of DD take up 54.5% of the samples investigated in this study. According to the Spearman correlation analysis, sleep time, physical exercise, diet control, treatment regimen, TG and HbA1c significantly affect the patients' DD. Through the multivariate linear regression analysis, this study shows that (1) sleep time significantly influences the T2DM patients' DD (β=-0.213, P=0.034); (2) sleep time also impacts emotional burden (β=-0.379, P=0.027); (3) physical exercise (β=-0.195, P=0.002), treatment regimen (β=0.158, P=0.026) and diet control (β=0.158, P=0.026) are the three major influencing factors for regimen-related distress.

CONCLUSION: In the small-mid-sized city where the treatment regimen is not highly advanced, to alleviate the T2DM patients' DD, the medical staff should suggest the patients to improve sleep quality and exercise more, help them positively understand the insulin infusion therapy and take proper diet control.