Background:The clinical and methodological diversity observed in national and regional diabetes surveys, emphasized on the need of the weighted average prevalence of diabetes. Objective: To measure the pooled prevalence of type 2 diabetes mellitus in the adult population of Pakistan. Methods: The prospective cross-sectional studies reporting adult diabetes in Pakistan and published on any date were retrieved from PubMed, ScienceDirect and PakMediNet databases. In the meta-analysis, PRISMA guidelines were used for reporting; the AXIS tool for assessing quality and risk of bias within studies; I 2 statistics for measuring heterogeneity between studies and subgroups; and Tableau Public 10.4 for geographic mapping of included studies. Using Meta-Analyst 3.13 βeta, overall and subgroup pooled estimates were measured by random effects model. Results: The pooled sample of twelve studies included 42,051 adults (≥20 years) comprised of both sexes from urban and rural Pakistan. The pooled prevalence of diabetes was 13.7% (95% CI, 10.7-17.3). None of the twelve studies was of poor quality (<10 scores). Ten studies were published in ISI indexed journals, and nine of them were indexed for Medline. The level of heterogeneity observed across studies and between subgroups was moderate (<50%). The subgroup analysis revealed a higher pooled estimate of diabetes in males than in females (13.1 vs. 12.4%). It was also higher in urban than in rural patients (15.1 vs. 1.6%), and in HbA1c than in OGTT tests (23.9 vs. 14.4%). However, pooled estimates of the WHO and the ADA criteria were similar (13.8 vs. 13.5%). Conclusions:The prevalence of diabetes is on the rise in the adult population of Pakistan. The heterogeneity across studies observed in the meta-analysis suggested that the design of future diabetes surveys should be efficient and purposeful, and that valid tools and methods should be used to generate more precise data. Moreover, harmony between the stakeholders is much needed to seek a true picture of the diabetes burden in the country.

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Objective: To assess the effects of nutrition education intervention on dietary practices and nutritional status of pregnant women. Methods: In this quasi-experimental study, 215 pregnant women were enrolled from Gynae OPD, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, Lahore, Pakistan during 2017-18. Dietary practices were assessed using the usual intake form and scoring was done against food guide pyramid. Nutritional status was evaluated by anthropometric measurements and biochemical estimation. In addition to nutrition counselling, each woman was prescribed with supplements commonly used during pregnancy. Dietary habits and nutritional status were reassessed after two months. The women lost to follow up were 21 (9.8%) therefore data obtained from 194 women were subjected to final analysis by using SPSS 20. Results: The age of women ranged between 18 and 38 years. Those who never attended a school were 14.4%; poor 46.0%; and working 3.7%. The comparison between pre- and post-counselling dietary practices showed improvement in the numbers of women taking recommended portions of bread & cereals (79.4% vs. 95.9%, p = <0.001); vegetables (50.5% vs. 64.9%, p = 0.004); milk & dairy products (38.1% vs. 81.4%, p = <0.001); and a reduction in the numbers of women taking recommended portions of meat & bean (100.0% vs. 94.8%, p = 0.002). The frequency of women taking recommended diet as per food guide pyramid improved from 3.1% to 37.1%. Vitamin D status also showed improvement in the numbers of women with normal levels of serum vitamin D (7.1% vs. 33.3%, p = 0.079). Conclusions: Overall, nutrition counseling showed positive effects on nutritional status of pregnant women. Thus, the nutrition counseling must be an essential part of antenatal care for all pregnant women in the setting. doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.36.4.1919 How to cite this:Kaleem R, Adnan M, Nasir M, Rahat T. Effects of antenatal nutrition counselling on dietary practices and nutritional status of pregnant women: A quasi-experimental hospital based study. Pak J Med Sci. 2020;36(4):---------.  doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.36.4.1919 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Background: Rapid blood glucose estimation is required to prescribe treatments and to make dose adjustments in diabetic patients. However, measuring plasma glucose levels is time consuming. Therefore, the use of glucometers has greatly increased. Objectives: To measure the correlation between capillary and venous blood glucose levels. Methods: Seventy patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) were enrolled in the present study and informed written consent was obtained from all participants. Demographic characteristics and clinical information was noted. Capillary and venous glucose levels were determined. Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 21 was used for data analysis. Results: Mean age of patients was 52 ± 12 years. It included 29% men; 71% women; 9% smokers; and 90% poor. Mean venous glucose was 11.73 ± 4.64 mmol/L and mean capillary glucose 12.57 ± 5.21 mmol/L. These findings demonstrated a significant intermethod mean difference of 0.84 mmol/L (P < 0.001). Inter-glucose difference was not significant at glucose levels near normal. However, it increased gradually with rise in glucose measurements and was significant at elevated glucose levels. Both concordance correlation coefficient and intraclass correlation coefficient demonstrated positive correlation and more consistency between glucose estimations. A Bland and Altman plot presented excellent agreement between glucometrically and photometrically determined glucose levels. Conclusion: A positive correlation coefficient showed strong association between capillary and venous glucose measurements.