Attitudes Regarding Participation in a Diabetes Screening Test among an Assyrian Immigrant Population in Sweden

Characteristics of participants who take up screening tests for diabetes and lipid disorders: a systematic review

OBJECTIVES

To perform a systematic review on the characteristics of participants who attended screening programmes with blood glucose tests, lipid profiles or a combination of them, respectively.

DESIGN

Systematic review following the Meta-analysis Of Observational Studies in Epidemiology checklist.

DATA SOURCES

PubMed and Medline databases for English literature from 1 January 2000 to 1 April 2020.

ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA

Original observational studies that reported baseline characteristics of apparently healthy adult participants screening for diabetes and lipid disorders were included in this review.

DATA EXTRACTION

We examined their sociodemographic characteristics, including age, gender, body mass index (BMI) and lifestyle habits. The quality of the included articles was evaluated by the Appraisal of Cross-sectional Studies.

RESULTS

A total of 33 articles involving 38 studies in 22 countries were included and analysed in this systematic review. Overall, there was a higher participation rate among subjects who were female in all screening modalities (female vs male: 46.6%-63.9% vs 36.1%-53.4% for diabetes screening; 48.8%-58.4% vs 41.6%-51.2% for lipid screening; and 36.4%-76.8% vs 23.2%-63.6% for screening offering both). Compared with the BMI standard from the WHO, participants in lipid screening had lower BMI (male: 23.8 kg/m² vs 24.2 kg/m², p<0.01; female: 22.3 kg/m² vs 23.6 kg/m², p<0.01). Furthermore, it is less likely for individuals of lower socioeconomic status to participate in diabetes or lipid screening in developed areas.

CONCLUSIONS

We identified that individuals from lower socioeconomic groups were less likely to take up programmes for diabetes and/or lipid screening in developed areas. These populations are also likely to be at higher risk of non-communicable diseases. Future studies should investigate the barriers and facilitators of screening among non-participants, where targeted interventions to enhance their screening uptake are warranted.

The participation rate of migrant women in gestational diabetes screening in Austria: a retrospective analysis of 3293 births

Purpose

This study evaluated the extent to which migrant women participate in the mandatory oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) for gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) screening in Austria.

Methods

A retrospective data analysis was carried out of births at an obstetrics unit in a university hospital between January 2013 and December 2015. The inclusion criteria were singleton pregnancies, live births, birth weight ≥ 3500, and no preexisting diabetes mellitus. The patient’s extramurally obtained OGTT values and history of GDM were checked. If the mother’s country of birth was not Austria, the woman was classified as a migrant. Three groups were defined: group 1—women with normal OGTT; group 2—women with pathological OGTT; and group 3—women without OGTT or with an incomplete OGTT.

Main outcome measures: Numbers of complete and incomplete OGTTs and rate of women with pathological OGTTs not treated in accordance with the guidelines among mothers born in Austria or migrants. The groups were compared using the t-test, chi-squared test, or Fisher’s exact test.

Results

A total of 3293 births met the inclusion criteria, and 43.52% of all mothers were migrants; 16.8% of all women had pathological OGTT findings. Only 60.1% of the latter received treatment in accordance with the guidelines. The proportion of mothers born in Austria who did not have OGTTs, or only incomplete ones, was 5.4%. In the group of migrant women, the corresponding figure was 10.5% (P < 0.01).

Conclusions

Migrant women have significantly lower rates of participation in GDM screening.