Aims
Intensive lifestyle, dietary interventions and patient education have been recommended as key milestones in to facilitate the management of Diabetes and contain the growing incidence. We performed a systematic review and meta-analysis to assess the health benefits of medical nutrition therapy among patients with diabetes.
Design
A systematic search was performed in MEDLINE/PubMed, SCOPUS, and Cochrane library from onset up to February 2019 to identify trials investigating the health effect of Medical nutrition (MNT) in patients with diabetes. Random-effects models were used to calculate the effect sizes as weighted mean difference (WMD) and 95% confidence intervals (CI).
Results
Eleven studies containing 1227 participants were included in the meta-analysis. Pooled results showed a significant reduction in Fasting blood sugar (FBS) (WMD= -8.85mg/dl, 95% CI: -14.41, -3.28), HbA1c (WMD: -0.43%, 95% CI: -0.69, -0.17), weight (WMD: -1.54kg, 95% CI: -2.44, -0.64), Body mass index (BMI) (WMD: -0.34 Kg/m2, 95% CI: -0.52, -0.17), waist circumference (WMD: -2.16cm, 95% CI: -4.09, -0.23), cholesterol (WMD: -4.06mg/dl, 95% CI: -7.31, -0.81), Systolic blood pressure (SBP) (WMD: -7.90mmHg, 95% CI: -13.03, -2.77). Results of meta-regression analysis based on age of participants and duration of intervention were not significant.
Conclusions
Patients with diabetes who received medical nutrition therapy showed significant improvements in outcome measures of FBS, HbA1c, weight, BMI, waist circumference, cholesterol, and SBP.