Effectiveness of Mobile Application for Promotion of Physical Activity Among Newly Diagnosed Patients of Type II Diabetes – A Randomized Controlled Trial

Abstract

Background: Mobile health intervention shows the positive effects on the management of chronic diseases. Therefore, the study was planned to study the effectiveness of a mobile-based application promotion of physical activity among newly diagnosed patients with type II diabetes. Methods: The present study was a parallel-design randomized controlled trial conducted over 2 years. The participants were type II diabetes patients between 18 and 60 years within 3 months of diagnosis who attended the endocrinology outpatient department having knowledge of using smart phone. The sample size was calculated to be 66 and 33 for each arm. The block random design method was adopted for allocation into different arms. A pretested interview schedule was used for the collection of data. Outcomes included body mass index, waist circumference, body fat percentage, and changes in the physical activity was obtained by global physical activity questionnaire (GPAQ). The information thus collected were processed and analyzed using SPSS v 20. Results: The study included 66 patients aged between 18 and 60 years, out of which 33 were enrolled into control and 33 into intervention group. The mean age of the participants was 42.29 ± 9.5 years ranged from 25 years to 59 years, 65.2% were males and 34.8% were females. It was observed that a higher proportion of intervention participants met WHO recommendations of physical activity level. Total metabolic equivalent of task (MET) value per minute (Mean ± SD) was 1347.27 ± 1028.5 in the control group and 1223.03 ± 584.87 in intervention group at baseline and was not different (P = 0.538). The total MET value per minute was found to be higher among the intervention group in all follow-ups. There was a significant decrease in weight, BMI, waist circumference, hip circumference, body fat percentage, and systolic blood pressure (SBP) in the intervention group. Conclusions: Cost-effective, simple mobile applications may help in routine clinical practice to encourage the patients for the promotion of physical activity.

Effectiveness of Diabetes Self-Management Education among Diabetes Mellitus Patients. Systematic Review

“…Tables 3 and 4 outline the key characteristics of the populations included in the 19 studies and the interventions assessed. These studies were conducted in various countries worldwide, including 6 in China [21][22][23][24][25][26], 4 in India [27][28][29][30], 2 in Netherlands [31,32] and one study each in Spain [33], Mexico [34], Italy [35], USA [36], United Kingdom [37], Germany [38] and Lebanon [39].…”

“…Of the 19 studies, 16 evaluated health education interventions by comparing them with a control group, while 3 assessed educational programs or interventions without a control group. Among these studies, 9 were randomized controlled trials (RCTs) [21,25,27,28,30,31,32,37]; one was an experimental study [22], 4 were intervention study [23,35,36,38]; 2 were program evaluation studies [34,39]; 2 were prospective studies [33,26]; and one study was a non-randomized controlled study [24].…”

“…The interventions assessed in these studies include a multi-intervention program (73.68%) [21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][31][32][33][34]36,37]; physical activity intervention (10.5%) [29,30]; nutrition intervention (10.5%) [38,39] and a single study that evaluated psychological interventions [35]. Educational interventions were conducted in groups of participants in 47.36% of the studies, individual interventions in 47.36% and a combination of individual and group interventions is only one study.…”

“…The impact of educational interventions on the body weight of newly diabetic patients with T2DM has been assessed in 5 studies [21,30,31,37,38] and on BMI in 11 studies [21,22,26,30,31,33,34,[36][37][38][39].…”

“…Eight studies [21,22,30,31,33,34,37,39], have assessed the impact of educational interventions on the arterial pressure among newly diagnosed patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus(T2DM) and six of them compared the arterial pressure values between the two study groups (intervention group and control group) [21,22,30,31,37]. Only one study reported a statistically significant difference in systolic blood pressure (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) [39].…”