Longitudinal intervention study for Type II diabetes patients

Objective: Patients with diabetes were noted to be at high risk of hypertension, most of them develop high bold pressure during time. The project aims to evaluate how the individuals' blood pressure, HbA1c and weight change over time; assess the effectiveness of a diabetes self-care and diet intervention for improving clinical outcomes such as blood pressure, HbA1c and weight; determine the relationship between the HbA1c, blood pressure and weight among individuals. Methods: Esperanza Health Center in Philadelphia computerized 1038 medical records of patients with type II diabetes over the age 18 who receive health care services between 2006 and 2010. The subjects were expected to visit the Health Center at least once every six months. The study populations were divided by two groups: intervention group and non-intervention group. Trimed mean with SE for physiological variables for each 6 months time periods are graphed. General Linear Model with random intercept and model with random intercept and random slope were studied. Results: The intervention group has overall lower average systolic, weight, and HbA1c than the non-intervention group. Both the intervention group and non-intervention group have a decreasing trend in blood pressure and HbA1c over time, but the intervention group decrease more obviously than the non-intervention group. Conclusions: The nutrition and education intervention has a significant effect for type II diabetes patients, which help them reduce the blood pressure and HbA1c over time. Although the patients are supposed to visit the health center every six months, it still exists a bunch of missing value, which might produce information bias to this study.