Diabetic peripheral neuropathy and associated factors among patients attending Mbarara Regional Referral Hospital, Southwestern Uganda: a cross-sectional study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN) is a microvascular complication of diabetes mellitus (DM), that is associated with increased risks of morbidity and disability, especially ulceration and amputation. Timely identification, diagnosis, and management of DPN are crucial to prevent amputations, mitigate disabilities, and enhance the quality of life for persons with diabetes. We determined the prevalence and factors associated with peripheral neuropathy among patients with diabetes at Mbarara Regional Referral Hospital (MRRH), southwestern Uganda. We conducted a cross-sectional study at the Diabetic Clinic of MRRH from November 2023 to January 2024. We used an interviewer-administered questionnaire to obtain data on socio-demographic and medical characteristics, and used the Toronto Clinical Scoring System (TCSS) tool to determine DPN and its severity. Levels/stages of neuropathy were grouped basing on the score as no neuropathy (0–5), mild neuropathy (6–8), moderate neuropathy (9–11), and severe neuropathy ≥ 12. Modified Poisson regression, with robust standard errors was used to evaluate associations between DPN and independent variables. In total, 355 participants were enrolled with mean age 55.94 ± 13.43 years. Most participants were female (60%). The prevalence of DPN was 38.03% (n = 135; 95% CI 33.11–43.21%). Having high blood pressure of > 138/80 mmHg (adjusted prevalence ratio [aPR] = 2.73, 95% CI 1.80–4.13), longer duration of diabetes of ≥ 6 years (aPR = 2.01 95% CI 1.46–2.75), being aged ≥ 60 years (aPR = 1.49, 95%CI 1.04–2.13) and having fasting blood sugar > 7mmol/l (aPR = 1.96 95% CI 1.34–2.90) were independently associated with DPN. Approximately one in three DM patients surveyed had DPN. Hypertension, longer diabetes duration, advanced age, and high fasting blood sugar were associated with DPN. Timely detection and targeted interventions, particularly for individuals with modifiable risk factors like hypertension and poor glucose control, could play a crucial role in preventing or delaying the progression of DPN in this setting.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".