Fasting Blood Sugar Levels and Associated Factors among Diabetes Patients in East Shewa, Ethiopia: Bayesian Approach

Introduction: Majority of diabetes patients fail to achieve adequate level of fasting blood sugar. Therefore, the pre Department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics, Collage of Health and Medical Sciences, Haramaya University, Haramaya, Ethiopia sent study uses a Bayesian framework to identify factors associated with level of fasting blood sugar. Methods: Institution based cross-sectional study was employed. Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) simulation was used to estimate the model parameters. Summary statistic including mean, standard deviation (SD) and 95% credible intervals (CI) of unknown parameters was calculated from stored MCMC samples. Result: The mean (±SD) fasting blood sugar level was 151.07 (±38.21) mg/dl. Good Diabetic self-care activities (β=-8.78; HPD CI: (-16.63, -0.93)), having chronic illness other than diabetes mellitus (DM) (β=9.89; HPD CI: (1.39- 18.38)), taking insulin (β=16.82; HPD CI: (4.82, 28.83)) and both insulin and oral anti-diabetic medication (β=32.31; HPD CI: (15.20, 49.37)) and having serious psychological distress (β=15.46; HPD CI: (1.70 – 29.17)) were significantly associated with level of fasting blood sugar. Conclusions: Diabetic self-care activities, chronic illness other than DM, treatment regimen and depression were strong predictors of fasting blood sugar level among DM patients. Therefore, we recommend that integration of screening & treating for depression & comorbidities and give counseling on diabetic self-care activity along with the already existing DM treatment.