Pattern of treatment among diabetic patients in a sample of urban Greek population

It is well known that therapeutic habits and diabetic patient's compliance differ substantially between different populations. It is also accepted that if patients are recruired in specialized diabetes centers some important bias is likely to occur, e.g. an excess of insulin-treated subjects. Therefore, population studies are very helpful in order to establish treatment patterns in different populations. A descriptive study was performed during an epidemiological survey conducted on 12,842 randomly selected inhabitants of a suburb of Athens (both sexes, all ages). 509 persons were recorded as known diabetics. Information concerning the type of treatment was collected. Reliable data were available on 490 diabetic individuals. 145 (29.6%) of them were following diet alone, while 270 (55.1%) were receiving antidiabetic tablets and only 75 (15.1%) injected insulin. In patients 40 years old or more (n = 471), the corresponding numbers were 30.1, 56.5 and 13.4% respectively. Thus, it is obvious that insulin-treated patients represent a small percentage of the total diabetic population. It seems that these differences are caused by genetic as well as other factors.