Clinical and sociodemographic factors associated with the quality of life of children and adolescents with type 1 diabetes.
Elisabeth Luisa Rodrigues Ramalho, Valéria de Cássia Sparapani, Rebecca Ortiz La Banca Barber and 3 others
PMID 38251690WHAT IT FOUND
Lower family income was associated with lower quality of life in adolescents with type 1 diabetes.
The paper also reported links with insulin self-administration and time since diagnosis, but these were cross-sectional associations, not proof of cause.
Key findings
01Adolescents with type 1 diabetes whose parents had family income greater than a minimum wage had a lower prevalence of low/very low quality of life than those whose parents had income below a minimum wage (p = 0.049).
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The study used a convenience sample of 81 participants from two centres, so it may not represent other children and adolescents with type 1 diabetes. It was cross-sectional, so it cannot show that income, insulin self-administration or time since diagnosis caused differences in quality of life. The authors reported a small sample size and remote collection without researcher supervision as risks of bias. Guardians who were illiterate and children with no follow-up for more than a year were excluded, so the findings may not apply to those groups. The directions for insulin self-administration and time since diagnosis in the text did not match the supplied tables, so those results are unclear.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that higher family income improves quality of life or that insulin self-administration worsens it. This cross-sectional study only reports associations, and the directions for insulin self-administration and time since diagnosis are inconsistent between the text and tables.