ESPE Abstracts

Introduction: Diabetes Mellitus (DM) as a chronic disease can have a significant impact on the growth and development of children and young people. Previous studies had indicated that children and adolescents with Type 1 diabetes mellitus often experience growth problems, with poor metabolic control potentially affecting their growth velocity.

Aim: To study the impact of DM on the growth of affected children and young people receiving their care at Sultan Qaboos University Hospital (SQUH) – Oman.

Methods: Using GrowthXP software we have calculated the standard deviation score (SDS) of height, weight, and body mass index (BMI) at diagnosis and compared them with the most recent growth parameters. A multivariant analysis was done by using artificial intelligence tool “Excel GPT”. The study covered the patients who completed at least 12 months of care at SQUH.

Results: 134 patients were included in the study, aged 10.7 ± 3.7 years. Majority were females (81F: 53M). Females have a higher mean “height SDS at diagnosis” and “most recent height SDS” compared to males. The standard deviation is larger in males, indicating more variability in height SDS among males. The average of all measured HbA1c levels since diagnosis for each patient does not have a statistically significant impact on the difference in height SDS, coefficient of -0.03 and p-value of 0.665. Studying the duration of diabetes, a strong positive correlation (r =0.9) noted between most recent heights SDS and duration of diabetes between 0-3 years, whereas moderate positive correlation (r =0.67) when the duration was more than 4 years. 70 patients had a negative height difference between height SDS at diagnosis and most recent height SDS. Overall, the height SDS difference shows a negative correlation with duration of diabetes (r = -0.4). The paired t-test indicates a statistically significant difference in height SDS for females between the time of diagnosis and the most recent measurement.

Conclusion: Diabetes Mellitus has a negative impact on growth in majority of patients. Younger patients and those with a shorter duration of diabetes have higher probabilities of height improvement. The probability distribution is similar across genders.