Fear of hypoglycemia - the barrier to control of type 1 diabetes mellitus

• Maria E. Chernaya
• Anna R. Volkova

Abstract

The aim is to evaluate the indicators of glycemic variability in patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) with different levels of fear of hypoglycemia (FOH) in order to optimize disease management.

Material and methods. The study included 77 patients with T1DM. The patients underwent a survey on the level of fear of hypoglycemia HFS-II (hypoglycemia fear survey-II), adapted to the Russian language. Continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) was performed in 39 patients using the iPro-2 system, Medtronic.

Results. FOH was 70.25 [60.0; 81.0] points HFS-II. The glycosylated hemoglobin type A1c level in the group of patients with a low FOH was significantly lower than among patients with a high FOH and amounted to 6.98±0.98% and 8.24±1.13%, respectively (p=0.008). According to CGM, among patients with a low FOH significantly lower variability of glycemia was observed (indices SD, MAGE, CONGA, MAG, LI) in comparison with patients with a high FOH (p=0.024, 0.01, 0.008, 0.03, 0.026 respectively).

Conclusion. The level of FOH in patients with T1DM averaged 70.25 [60.0; 81.0] points out of 165. The variability of glycemia (SD, MAGE, CONGA, MAG, LI) in patients with a high FOH is significantly higher than in patients with a low FOH.

Keywords:type 1 diabetes mellitus; hypoglycemia; glycemic variability

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