Online diabetes self-management education application for reducing glycated hemoglobin level among patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Background: This meta-analysis study aims to evaluate the Diabetes Self-Management Education and Support (DSMES) online application for reducing glycated hemoglobin levels among patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) patients.

Main text: The Web of Science (WoS), Cochrane Library, PubMed, Scopus, PROSPERO, and EMBASE databases were searched with Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) terms without minimum time limitation until February 2024. To be eligible, all the following predefined inclusion criteria must have been met in the original randomized controlled trial (RCT) studies without language limitation including T1DM, patients, online digital interventions such as web-based, mobile health applications, or e-health, 3 or more months follow-up, and measuring HbA1c. Finally, 10 studies were conducted, 1195 T1DM patients were included in this study of which 421 (35.2%) were adults and 774 (64.8%) were adolescents. Overall, the mean differences for HbA1c at 6 months between baseline and follow-up groups was 0.27% (-0.76, 1.31) (P < 0.001) in adultescents and 0.92% (0.34, 1.5) (P < 0.001) in adults. Moreover, the mean differences for HbA1c at 12 months between baseline and follow-up groups was - 0.02% (-0.31, 0.26) (P = 0.85) in adults.

Conclusions: Online DSME is effective in improving the glycemic control of adults and adultescents individuals with T1DM for reducing HbA1c while maintaining this important factor at an appropriate dose.