Diagnosed diabetes is highly prevalent (15.7%) among the elderly in Latin America and the Caribbean, and is strongly associated with higher BMI and lower education.
May inform targeted diabetes screening in elderly with higher BMI or lower education; cross-sectional data leave causality and practice implications open.
Objective: To examine the relation of diagnosed diabetes mellitus (DM) to the level of education and body mass index (BMI) among the elderly of seven cities using data from SABE. Methods: The SABE survey was based on a probabilistic sample of the elderly population. Results of various logistic regression models were applied to prevalence rates to adjust for age, gender, and BMI by the covariate method given the variability of these parameters. Results: The prevalence of diagnosed diabetes among the elderly was 15.7% (95% CI 14.7-16.8), with the highest prevalence reported in Bridgetown and the lowest in Buenos Aires. Discussion: There was a high prevalence of diagnosed DM among the elderly of the seven cities. The prevalence of diagnosed DM was strongly associated with BMI and low education. The inclusion of these factors in policies and programs aiming to reduce the prevalence of diabetes among the elderly is recommended.
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Barceló et al. (2006) studied this question.
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