In brief
HKU's Faculty of Medicine has launched a free mobile app that calculates a diabetes risk score out of 50 from age, height, weight and blood pressure details. A score of 28 or above means high risk. The scoring is based on a 1995 study of 2,900 Hong Kong Chinese people, and the team recommends a simple screening once a year.
Heart disease and stroke are among the leading health threats to Hong Kong people, and many cases are caused by diabetes.The University of Hong Kong's Faculty of Medicine has developed a free mobile app, "Diabetes Risk Test". Members of the public only need to enter simple details such as their age, height and weight, and the app automatically calculates a diabetes risk score for the user and gives recommendations accordingly. The score has a maximum of 50 points, and a score of 28 or above is considered high risk. The app also has a "Health Tips" section that provides information on diet and exercise. The team hopes the app will allow the public to carry out simple screening to identify undiagnosed diabetes patients in the community.
To use the app, users simply enter their age, height, weight, history of hypertension, recent systolic and diastolic blood pressure and so on, and the app calculates their simple diabetes score. The higher the age and weight indicators, the higher the score. People who are taking antihypertensive medication, or whose systolic pressure is above 140 or diastolic pressure is above 90, are also assigned additional points.
The development team explained that the scoring criteria in the app are based on data from the first study of cardiovascular and diabetes risk among Chinese people in Hong Kong. The study was conducted in 1995, and the team randomly recruited 2,900 Hong Kong Chinese people aged between 25 and 74. The results showed that in the high-risk group with a score above 28, one in every five people was diagnosed with diabetes after a blood test. Because the scoring system has a false-negative rate of less than 3% in the low-risk group, the team recommends that all users carry out a simple screening once a year and also have regular physical check-ups.
Dr. Wu Yu-chor, Honorary Clinical Associate Professor of the Division of Endocrinology and Diabetes, Department of Medicine, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, said that after 1995 the HKU team followed the above participants for as long as 23 years, and found that participants in the high-risk group had an incidence rate of about 33% after 20 years. In 2007, the HKU team carried out a similar test using the same scoring criteria in Shaanxi Province on the Mainland, and the results were similar, which suggests that age, weight indicators and history of hypertension are effective for screening diabetes patients.
In addition, to understand more accurately the risk factors for diabetes in society today, the team has decided to launch a new territory-wide cardiovascular risk survey, funded by the government's Health and Medical Research Fund. The team randomly invited 4,000 Chinese people aged between 25 and 74 by post to take part. Participants need to go to Queen Mary Hospital for a blood test and physical examination lasting about 3 to 4 hours, to find out whether they have problems such as high blood pressure, high blood sugar, high blood lipids, anaemia, and impaired liver and kidney function. The programme began in December last year and will run for four and a half years.
Original article: https://bit.ly/3ly7vfO