The association of health literacy with glycemic control in Saudi patients with type 2 diabetes.

OBJECTIVES: To identify the prevalence of health literacy among adult Saudi with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) patients and determine the clinical factors that are associated with health literacy scores including glycemic control. METHOD: A cross-sectional study that included 249 adult Saudi patients with T2DM (99 males and 150 females) who visited the Diabetes Clinic of the Endocrine Center at King Fahad Medical City, Riyadh,  Saudi Arabia between September 2017 and January 2018. The short test of Functional Health Literacy in Adults (Arabic version) was used to classify patients into 3 levels of functional health literacy: inadequate, marginal, and adequate. Demographic characteristics were noted and glycosylated hemoglobin was assessed routinely. Regression analysis was carried out to determine whether health literacy is associated with glycemic control. RESULTS: Majority of the participants had adequate literacy rate (68.7%). The adequate group is significantly younger (48.4±12.8) than the marginal (54.2±13.3) and inadequate group (54.1±9.1). Females in the adequate group were significantly lesser (54.6%) than the marginal (66.7%) and inadequate (81.8%) groups. Being female has a lesser odds of having an adequate health literacy level (odds ratio [OR] -1.24, confidence interval [CI] -1.97-0.50; p=0.001). Body mass index was positively associated with adequate health literacy level, but the significance was modest (OR 0.04; CI 0.003-0.09; p=0.045). CONCLUSION: Health literacy is high among Saudi T2DM patients and is not associated with glycemic control.

Prevalence and Associated Factors of Depression among Patients with Diabetes at Jazan Province, Saudi Arabia: A Cross-Sectional Study.

CONTEXT: Patients with diabetes mellitus (DM) have a poorer quality of life when compared with patients without DM. In fact, one in every five diabetic patients suffers from comorbid depression, which can lead to poor management, poor compliance with treatment, and low quality of life. Therefore, we assessed the prevalence of depression and identified its associated factors among diabetic patients at Jazan Province, KSA. METHODS AND MATERIALS: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 500 diabetic patients attending a diabetic center in addition to four primary healthcare centers. We used a simple Arabic translation of the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI II) tool to evaluate the depression level among the subjects. We also evaluated the frequencies of certain sociodemographic characteristics and clinical information. Moreover, we performed univariate and multivariate analyses to identify the potential risk factors using adjusted odds ratios (AORs). RESULTS: The prevalence of depression among DM patients was 20.6%. The majority of patients showed no depression (N = 285, 59.4%), one-fifth had mild depression (N = 96, 20.0%), some (N = 55, 11.4%) had moderate depression, and some had severe depression (N = 44, 9.2%). Depression was significantly more prevalent among uneducated patients (N = 27, 31.8%) (X2 = 17.627, P = 0.001) and patients with low monthly income (< 2500 SR/month) (N = 33, 22.8%) (X2 = 9.920, P = 0.019). Hypertension (AOR = 2.531, 95% CI [1.454, 4.406]) and ischemic heart diseases (AOR = 3.892, 95% CI [1.995, 7.593]) were considered as risk factors for depression among diabetic patients. CONCLUSIONS: Almost one in every five patients with DM is affected by depression coexisting with cardiovascular diseases. Therefore, screening for psychological problems, proper treatment, and educating patients with diabetes about DM self-management should be routine components of DM care.