Quality of Life in Type 1 Diabetic Children: Relationship to Microvascular Complications and Insulin Treatment Satisfaction

Abstract

he increased prevalence of T1DM in children and adolescents with its complications especially microvascular ones that affect the expectancy of their lives, besides imposing restrictions on their physical, emotional and social functioning, adversely affecting both their psychosocial well-being and the learning abilities, this almost always has a negative impact on the quality of life of these young patients and their families, in turn this would lead to worsening of their compliance and adherence to the treatment with subsequent hazards on the metabolic control, development and progression of adverse diabetic complications, which impose more disease burden and impact the quality of life of the growing young diabetics and their families. Theaim of the present study was to assess quality of life of a group of children and adolescents with type 1 diabetes and to investigate the relation of insulin treatment satisfactionand other sociodemographic and clinical indicatorsto their HRQOL. Alsoto measure serum levelof heat shock protein 27 (sHSP27) and investigate its relationship with diabetic microvascular complications and subsequent effect on quality of life. The current study included 60 children and adolescents with type 1 diabetes mellitus recruited from the regular attendants of the Diabetes Clinic, Children's Hospital, Ain Shams University. They were 22 (36.7%) males and 38 (63.3%) females, with age range between (8-18) years with a mean of 13.03±2.78 years. They were subdivided into two groups according to the presence of microvascular complications or not.