Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Diabetes mellitus is one of the main public health issues. It is becoming a world pandemic. Type 2 diabetes appears to involve interaction between susceptible genetic backgrounds and environmental factors. It’s important to identify modifiable risk factors that may help reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes. For the meantime no data in scientific literature or eating speed could influence on the risk of developing type 2 diabetes mellitus. Therefore the aim of the study was to assess the relationship between eating speed and the risk of type 2 diabetes mellitus.

Subjects and methods: A case-control study included 234 cases with newly confirmed diagnoses of type 2 diabetes mellitus and 468 controls those who were free of the disease. Cases and controls (ratio 1:2) were matched by gender and age (+5 years). A specifically designed questionnaire was used to collect information on possible risk factors of type 2 diabetes mellitus. Anthropometrical measurements were made according to WHO recommendations. The odds ratios (OR), and 95% confidence intervals (CI) for type 2 diabetes mellitus were calculated by a conditional logistic regression.

Results: The cases had higher body mass index and significantly lower education level, compared to the controls.

Variables such as a family history on diabetes, education, morning exercise, body mass index, waist circumference, cigarette smoking and plasma triglycerides level were retained in multivariate logistic regression models as confounders because their inclusion changed the value of the OR by more than 5% in any exposure category. After adjustment for possible confounders more than two-fold increased risk of type 2 diabetes mellitus was determined for subjects eating faster (OR=2.52; 95% CI 1.56–4.06) vs subjects eating slower.

Conclusions: Our data support a possible relationship between faster eating speed and the increased risk of type 2 diabetes mellitus.

Declaration of interest: The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest that could be perceived as prejudicing the impartiality of the research project.

Funding: This research did not receive any specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sector.