Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Intensive diabetes type 1 management can be achieved either with multiple daily insulin injection therapy or with continuous subcutaneous insulin infusion (CSII). The former is becoming increasingly popular do to its positive effects on glycemic control.

Objectives: Evaluate the evolution of total daily insulin dose (TDID) and weight on patients with CSII.

Methods: Patients with CSII of our department were included. Data regarding glycemic control, anthropometric parameters and TDID was collected before beginning of CSII, and 6 and 12 months after. Paired sample T-test was used to compare means and Pearson correlation coefficients were calculated, a value of P<0.05 was considered significant.

Results: We studied 64 patients (24 men; 39 women) with a mean HbA1c before CSII initiation of 8.2%±1.4, mean diabetes duration of 24.1±12.7 years and mean age in the moment CSII initiation of 33.6±11.2 years. We found a significant reduction in weight 12 months after the beginning of CSII (69.9 kg ±10.3 vs 68.3 kg ±11.1; P<0.001) and in HbA1c (8.2%±1.4 vs 7.4%±1.1; P=0.002). A reduction of TDID was also found but without statistical significance (52.6±14.9 vs 49.0±11.3; P=0.058). There was a moderate correlation between the variation of TDID with the duration of diabetes (r=0.56; P=0.007). No correlation was found between diabetes duration and weight variation or between weight and DTID.

Conclusions: Continuous subcutaneous insulin infusion therapy seems to be associated not only with the improvement of glycemic control, but also with reduction in body weight and in TDID. Diabetes duration seems to play a role in the individual response to CSII.

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.