Diabetes mellitus in Polytechnic Institute of Bragança community: characterization and knowledge

Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a chronic and metabolic disease recognized as a global public health problem of an increasing magnitude. Objectives: Characterize the DM in Polytechnic Institute of Bragança (PIB) community and assess the knowledge about the disease. Materials and Methods: In order to collect data, it was applied a questionnaire to 387 members of PIB community (students, teachers and non-teaching staff), between November 2014 and April 2015. Results and Discussion: The prevalence of DM determined in PIB community was 3.4% (13 respondents). From these, 7 (53.8%) have type I DM, 3 (23.1%) have type II DM, 1 (7.7%) have gestational DM while 2 (15.4%) do not know the type of diabetes that have. Regarding to the pharmacological therapeutics, 30.8% use insulin, 46.2% oral hypoglycemic drugs, while 23.1% don’t use any drug. Moreover, 27.6% said carry out a diet and 21.2% does physical exercise more than two times per week, about one third consume tobacco and alcohol. From all respondents, 97.7% claim knowing what DM is. In more detail, 38.6% said know the DM type I, 38.4% the DM type II and 20.0% the DM gestational. Concerning therapeutics used in the different types of DM 69.5% claim know, but only 14.5% were able to correctly identify the four existing drugs list provided. Furthermore, only 1% was able to identify correctly the three DM risk factors presented in the question, while 46% and 47% have identified two or one factors, respectively. Conclusion: It is concluded that the prevalence of diabetes in PIB is very low and the knowledge about the disease is acceptable