Diabetes self-care practices and resilience in the Brazilian COVID-19 pandemic: results of a web survey: DIABETESvid

Abstract

Background The world guidance on the measures of social distancing for prevention of COVID-19 has changed the daily habits of great part of the population, and this could influence the care and resilience with diabetes during situations of adversity. This study aimed at assessing the characteristics of diabetic individuals and self-care practices and resilience with diabetes in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil. Methods This is a cross-sectional web survey study carried out among adults with diabetes, in which a structured 43-item questionnaire was conducted on the REDCap plataform, including the Diabetes Self-Care Activities Questionnaire and Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale, to measure socio-demographic and clinical characteristics. The web survey was disseminated through the main social media and data were collected from September 1st to October 19th, 2020. Data analysis was performed according to type of diabetes mellitus (DM) and at a significance level of 5% (p < 0.05). Results Of the 1633 participants, 67.5% were women, 43.2% aged between 35 and 59 years old, 68.0% lived in the south-eastern region of Brazil, 57.1% had a high education level, 49% reported to have DM1 and 140 participants reported to have had COVID-19. Diabetes care mostly involved the use of medications (93%), whereas the least used ones were physical activity (24.6%) and examination of the shoes (35.7%). About 40% of the participants reported to be followed up by telemedicine, 61.5% monitored the glycaemic levels, 61.2% followed a healthy diet and 43.4% left home only to go to the supermarket and drugstore. The mean resilience was 25.4 (SD = 7.7). Conclusions In Brazil, individuals with diabetes followed social distancing and maintained their medication treatment for DM. However, practice of physical activity and foot examination was little followed by the participants, who also had a low level of resilience. These findings showed the importance of patient follow-up in the healthcare services, meaning that telemedicine should be improved and support provided for adaptation in view of the therapeutic setbacks.

Lifestyles Under Lockdown: A Scoping Review of International Studies on Type 2 Diabetes Self-Management Behaviors During COVID-19

“…Total studies yielded from databases with the search terms "COVID" and "diabetes" with the following separate search terms: "lifestyle", "health behaviors", "self-care", "self -management", "adherence", "compliance", "eating", "diet", "physical activity", "exercise", "sleep", "selfmonitoring of blood glucose", "SMBG", "continuous glucose monitoring", and "CGM": Eleven studies assessed diet. Several studies reported an increase in unfavorable dietary habits, including decreased dietary adherence (40), high consumption of fatty foods and sweets (39), and increased food intake (43,53). One study reported favorable changes in diet, i.e., increased fruit and vegetables and decreased snacks, fried, or processed foods (58).…”

“…Six studies reported substance use. For alcohol, Binhardi et al (39) and Ghosh et al (45) reported that modal responses were no alcohol consumption or no change in alcohol consumption, respectively. Hansel et al (47) and Sacre et al (36) reported no change in alcohol consumption.…”

Changes in self-care behaviors of Iranian patients with type 2 diabetes using insulin pens during COVID-19 pandemic

“…SDSCA contained 12 questions that were scored based on a seven-point Likert scale. We removed the question on smoking because none of the women and only a few men in our study smoked, and most previous studies also focused on the five main areas and eliminated this item ( Hurst et al, 2020 ; Binhardi et al, 2021 ; Almomani and Al-Tawalbeh 2022 ). Therefore, we used 11 items which assess five aspects of diabetes self-care activities, including diet (4 questions), physical activity (two questions), insulin injection or proper pill taking (one question), blood sugar self-monitoring (two questions), and foot care (two questions).…”

Onde os brasileiros obtiveram os medicamentos para o diabetes na pandemia de COVID-19? Resultados da DIABETESvid

“…Considerando a complexidade do diabetes, a necessidade do uso contínuo de medicamentos para o tratamento da doença, bem como os atuais desafios para a integralidade da assistência, tornou-se de grande valia investigar as particularidades do cuidado em diabetes no contexto pandêmico. Neste sentido, o presente estudo faz um recorte da DIABETESvid 12,13 para analisar as fontes de obtenção dos medicamentos para o diabetes na pandemia de COVID-19 no Brasil.…”

“…Os dados da presente análise fazem parte da pesquisa DIABETESvid, a qual investigou o autocuidado e a resiliência de pessoas com diabetes na pandemia de COVID-19 13 . Tratase de um estudo transversal conduzido na forma de websurvey, pesquisa realizada pela internet, no período de 1 de setembro a 19 de outubro de 2020 (semanas epidemiológicas 35 a 42).…”