medwireNews: Better control of blood sugar and hypoglycemia awareness has been linked to a reduction in diabetes symptoms in people who start using the FreeStyle Libre, researchers report.
Two presentations at the ATTD 2021 virtual conference used data from 9159 participants in the Association of British Clinical Diabetologists’ FreeStyle Libre audit. The audit included two questions to assess the burden of diabetes: one about feeling overwhelmed by the demands of diabetes and one about failure to manage oneself. The answers can range from “no problem” to “a very serious problem” and an average value of at least 3 means an increased burden of diabetes.
According to this definition, 53% of audit participants had moderate or high levels of diabetes before starting intermittently scanned continuous glucose monitoring (isCGM) with the FreeStyle Libre, with 60% rating at least one of the questions 3 or higher, reported Emma Wilmot (Derby University Hospitals and Burton, UK).
However, she noted that the inclusion criteria for FreeStyle Libre funding include a psychosocial indication and said, “As such, people with diabetes problems are likely to be over-represented in this cohort.”
There were three factors that were significantly associated with diabetes symptoms, namely a high level of glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) before the onset of isCGM and poor hypoglycaemia awareness (determined by the Gold Score) and, to a lesser extent, the female gender.
Among the 3,312 participants with data both before and after onset of isCGM, the prevalence of moderate or high exposure to diabetes decreased from 50% to 26%, reported Harshal Deshmukh (Hull York Medical School, UK).
In these individuals, improvements in HbA1c and Gold scores were most strongly associated with a decrease in diabetes burden, with frequent scans of the FreeStyle Libre showing a smaller but still significant association.
Deshmukh warned that they had no socioeconomic data that could have mixed up these associations, and he also reiterated the point that the population may have been biased towards people with diabetes problems.
But he added, “With almost 30% of people with diabetes in the UK now having FreeStyle Libre, so it’s a large population.”
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ATTD 2021; 2nd – 5th June
