Association of sleep quality with glycemic variability assessed by flash glucose monitoring in patients with type 2 diabetes
Glycemic variability or the fluctuation or variability in blood glucose levels result in oxidative stress and also a inflammatory markers which in turn give rise to various complications in patients with type 2 diabetes.
Technology such as continuous glucose monitoring systems and flash glucose monitoring systems have been adopted in order to measure glycemic variability. Several studies that shown as shown that inadequate sleep for improper sleep cycles can result in various adverse health outcomes and cause further glycaemic disturbances therefore this study was conducted to discover if there was any supposed association between sleep quality and glycemic variability in patients with T2DM. The study was conducted by Yang Yang and colleagues titled “Association of sleep quality with glycemic variability assessed by flash glucose monitoring in patients with type 2 diabetes” and the summary of the article has been given below.
Objective:
To assess the relationship between sleep quality and glycemic variability in patients with T2DM.
Method:
About 111 patients with Type 2 Diabetes were recruited. Every patient underwent flash glucose monitoring for a period of 14 days in order to derive data on glycemia variability. Post 14 days, every patient received a questionnaire on the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) in order to assess subjective sleep quality. Besides these, measures of HbA1c were also noted.
Findings:
Poor sleep quality was found to be associated with glycemic variability and not with HbA1c. Variations in blood glucose levels can result in several complications. Thereby adopting measures to enhance sleep quality can aid in reducing glycemic variations.
Limitations:
Since the study was a cross-sectional study it may not be able to conclude the link between poor sleep quality and variations in glycemia. A longitudinal study shall help conclude these findings.
Besides, the study was restricted to Chinese population and was a single centre study. Lastly, PSQI helps analyze sleep quality over a period of a month whereas polysomnography (PSG) helps analyze sleep quality for one or two nights. Combining both these could help obtain better results.
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