Low glycaemia increases risk of frailty and functional decline in elderly with T2DM: Study.

Type 2 diabetes used to be known as adult-onset diabetes, but both type 1 and type 2 diabetes can begin during childhood and adulthood. Type 2 is more common in older adults, but the increase in the number of children with obesity has led to more cases of type 2 diabetes in younger people.

A team of researchers conducted a systemic review to explore the risk of frailty and functional decline associated with low glycaemia in older people with type 2 diabetes.

The results of the systemic review are as follows:

• 11 studies were included.
• Six studies investigated the risk of frailty or physical decline with hypoglycaemia.
• Hypoglycaemia increased the risk of incident frailty in one study and the risk of fractures in four studies.
• In the sixth study, hypoglycaemia was associated with dependency.
• Five studies explored the association of low blood glucose/HbA1c with frailty.
• One study showed that mean blood glucose decreased with increasing frailty. Two studies reported that HbA1c inversely correlated with clinical frailty scale and HbA1c<6.9% increased risk of frailty respectively.
• The last two studies showed that HbA1c <6.5% associated with risk of any fracture and HbA1c <6.0% associated with increased risk of care need respectively.

Thus, the researchers concluded that low glycaemia increases the risk of frailty and functional decline in older people with type 2 diabetes. Management should minimise the incidence of low glycaemia in these patients.

Reference:

A study titled, "Low glycaemic state increases the risk of frailty and functional decline in older people with type 2 diabetes mellitus – evidence from a systematic review" by Abdelhafiz AH et al. published in the Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice.

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.diabres.2021.109085