Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Widespread availability of internet makes it an attractive communication tool among patients and providers. However, the clinical benefit of telemedical support on diabetes care remains inconclusive. This study is to determine whether an internet based mentoring program can improve glycemic control in type 1 diabetes (T1DM) patients with inadequate glycemic control.

Methods: Patients with T1DM on intensive insulin therapy and with HbA1c ≧ 8.0% were randomized to mentoring (glucometer transmission with feedback from mentors) or control (glucometer transmission without feedback) for 12 weeks. Five mentors (3 male and 2 female) were interviewed and selected from an internet community for Korean T1DM people (i.e. JahkEunSon(small hands)’s Type 1 Diabetes Cafe; http://cafe.naver.com/dmtype1.cafe). Two of them were T1DM patient themselves and three of them were parents of at least 1 child diagnosed with T1DM for at least 5 years. They were all university graduates except for one with 2 years of college education.

Results: A total of 57 T1DM patients with mean diabetes duration 7.4 years were recruited from Samsung Medical Center in Seoul, Republic of Korea. In total, the mentoring group and control groups login to the website 764 and 203 times, respectively. There was a reduction in fasting plasma glucose from 231.03±79.39 mg/dL to 191.63±81.38 mg/dL in the mentoring group after 12 weeks. In addition, treatment satisfaction score (from 28.94±7.26 to 33.21±4.89) and number of self blood glucose monitoring (from 3.96±1.91 to 5.02±2.36) improved in the mentoring group. There was no significant reduction in fructosamine and HbA1c in the mentoring after completion of the study. However, these differences in changes in metabolic parameters and questionnaire scores between groups were not statistically significant.

Conclusions: Internet based mentoring program for T1DM patients with inadequate glycemic control has not proved to be superior to the usual follow-up.

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 work was supported, however funding details unavailable.