The status of blood glucose monitoring and its influencing factors in Chinese patients with type 2 diabetes initiating premixed insulin: A prospective real-world study

Objective

This study aimed to assess the current state of self-monitoring of blood glucose (SMBG) in Chinese patients initiating premixed insulin and its influential factors.

Research Design and Methods

This is a single-arm, multi-center, prospective real-world study enrolling a total of 8214 adult patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) newly initiated premixed insulin analogues. Each patient was followed up for 12 weeks, and the data related to SMBG was collected at week 1, week 4, week 8 and week 12, while data related to glycated hemoglobin were collected at week 1 and week 12. The primary outcome was the frequency of SMBG over 12 weeks.

Results

At week 12, 83.3 % monitored blood glucose at least once, while 20.3 % of participants continued SMBG every week. The average monitoring frequency was 4.78 times/week over the first 4 weeks and 3.33 times/week over 12 weeks. The patients with a higher frequency of SMBG had better control of blood glucose.

Conclusions

This study found that most T2DM patients would take SMBG but the adherence decreased over time. The adherence to SMBG in Chinese T2DM patients was influenced by age, insulin dosage, education level, and diabetes duration. SMBG benefited the improvement of glycemic control.