Alcohol Consumption as a Risk Factor for the Development of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus in Patients at Hospital Central de Nampula, Northern Mozambique

ABSTRACT

Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a disorder characterized by high levels of blood glucose. Biochemically, it is classi-fied into type 1, type 2, and gestational diabetes. The factors associated with type 2 diabetes mellitus include obesity, seden-tary lifestyle and alcoholism. We investigated the effect of alcohol on the development of type 2 diabetes mellitus in patients at Hospital Central de Nampula. A laboratory-based and cross-sectional study was conducted. We quantified sugar and pH levels of popular beverages and analyzed 74 type 2 diabetes mellitus patients. Distilled bev-erages had a higher sugar amount (the mean value was 14.3%, 143g) than undistilled (4.33%, 43.3g). The pH showed no signif-icant difference, and it was approximately 4. Overall, type 2 diabetes mellitus alcohol consumers were 30 (40.5%) and the ma-jority 44 (59.5%) were non-alcoholic. Most of those deemed type 2 diabetes mellitus patients had a first-degree family history of DM (47.3%; n= 35). The other 27 (36.5%) had no family history, and 12 (16.2%) did not know. Of the 27 patients with no DM family history, 16 (59.3%) consumed alcohol before the disease diagnosis, and most of them consumed undistilled beverages. The other 11 (40.7%) did not consume alcohol. Despite alcohol consumption, frequency and level were moderate. Our results strongly suggest that previous alcohol consumption is not a factor for the development of type 2 diabetes mellitus.