You are here

  • Home
  • Archive
  • Volume 6, Issue 1
  • Newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes in an ethnic minority population: clinical presentation and comparison to other populations

Article Text

Article menu

Download PDFPDF

XML
Pathophysiology/complications
Newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes in an ethnic minority population: clinical presentation and comparison to other populations
  1. Michael Morkos1,
  2. Bettina Tahsin1,
  3. Louis Fogg2,
  4. Leon Fogelfeld1
  1. 1 Division of Endocrinology and Diabetes, John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital of Cook County and Rush University Medical Center, Chicago, Illinois, USA
  2. 2 Community, Systems, and Mental Health Nursing, Rush University College of Nursing, Chicago, Illinois, USA
  1. Correspondence to Dr Leon Fogelfeld; lfogelfeld{at}cookcountyhhs.org

Abstract

Objective To characterize the clinical presentation of newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes of ethnic minority adults in Chicago and compare with other populations.

Research design and methods Cross-sectional study examining the data of 2280 patients newly diagnosed with type 2 diabetes treated between 2003 and 2013 in a large Chicago public healthcare system.

Results Mean age of the patients was 49±11.3 years, men 54.4%, African-Americans 48.1%, Hispanics 32.5%, unemployed 69.9%, uninsured 82.2%, English-speaking 75.1%, and body mass index was 32.8±7.4 kg/m2. Microvascular complications were present in 50.1% and macrovascular complications in 13.4%. There was a presence of either macrovascular or microvascular complications correlated with older age, hypertension, dyslipidemia, inactivity, speaking English, and being insured (p<0.01). Glycosylated hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) at presentation did not correlate with diabetes complications. In our cohort, when compared with a diverse population in the UK and insured population in the USA, HbA1c at presentation was 10.0% (86 mmol/mol), 6.6% (49 mmol/mol), and 8.2% (66 mmol/mol); nephropathy was 22.2%, 16.7%, and 5.7%; retinopathy was 10.7%, 7.9%, and 1.4%; and neuropathy was 27.7%, and 6.7% in the UK (p<0.001). There were no significant differences between groups in the prevalence of macrovascular complications.

Conclusion These results show the vulnerability of underserved and underinsured patients for developing diabetes complications possibly related to a delayed diagnosis.

  • diagnosis
  • comorbidity
  • type 2 diabetes
  • health disparities

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjdrc-2018-000568

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Contributors MM constructed the research, performed the statistics, and wrote the manuscript; BT revised and edited the manuscript; LoF reviewed parts of the statistical analysis of the study; LeF directed the research, provided the data from the diabetes clinic database, reviewed the statistics, and guided and edited the manuscript. LeF is the guarantor of this article.

    • Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient consent Not required.

    • Ethics approval Institutional Review Board of John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital of Cook County, Cook County Health & Hospitals System.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.