%0 Journal Article
%T Predictors of health-related quality of life in type II diabetic patients in Greece
%A Angelos A Papadopoulos
%A Nick Kontodimopoulos
%A Aristidis Frydas
%A Emmanuel Ikonomakis
%A Dimitris Niakas
%J BMC Public Health
%D 2007
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/1471-2458-7-186
%X The sample (N = 229, 52.8% female, 70.0 years mean age) lived in a rural community of Lesvos, an island in the northeast of the Aegean Archipelagos. The generic SF-36 instrument, administered by trainee physicians, was used to measure HRQOL. Scale scores were compared with non-parametric Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests and multivariate stepwise linear regression analyses were used to investigate the effect of sociodemographic and diabetes-related variables on HRQOL.The most important predictors of impaired HRQOL were female gender, diabetic complications, non-diabetic comorbidity and years with diabetes. Older age, lower education, being unmarried, obesity, hypertension and hyperlipidaemia were also associated with impaired HRQOL in at least one SF-36 subscale. Multivariate regression analyses produced models explaining significant portions of the variance in SF-36 subscales, especially physical functioning (R2 = 42%), and also showed that diabetes-related indicators were more important disease predictors, compared to sociodemographic variables.The findings could have implications for health promotion in rural medical practice in Greece. In order to preserve a good HRQOL, it is obviously important to prevent diabetes complications and properly manage concomitant chronic diseases. Furthermore, the gender difference is interesting and requires further elucidation. Modifying screening methods and medical interventions or formulating educational programs for the local population appear to be steps in the correct direction.Diabetes Mellitus (DM) is a major cause of morbidity and mortality and places a huge strain on public health funding [1]. At present, the disease has reached epidemic proportions, affecting more than 170 million people worldwide, with an estimated increase of at least 50% by 2010, especially in developing countries, and expected to double to about 300 million by the year 2025. Globally, this represents a 42% increase in the number of people with
%U http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/7/186