Background: Diabetes is the most common and highly prevalent non-communicable lifestyle disorder till date. Impaired glucose tolerance was a precursor to development of hyperglycemia in diabetes.
Objective: The objective of this study was to explore the evidence base for impaired glucose tolerance and diabetes descriptively and report the current state of published articles indexed in PubMed.
Materials and Methods: Descriptive exploratory study through a literature search was done to identify nine time-points in the timeline from 1970-2010, with five-year intervals in order to identify the scientific trend for Evidence-based diabetes care (EBDC). The number of obtained citations were classified and analyzed under the names of search filters of PubMed namely- text availability, publication date, species, article type, language, gender, journal categories, age and subject areas. The numbers for categories and subcategories of search filters were considered for comparison and analysis. Descriptive analysis using frequencies on Microsoft Excel 2010 worksheet was done.
Results: There is an exponential increase in number of articles in diabetes over the 40 years. After comparison for various categories and sub-categories, there was a greater prevalence of 'abstract available' articles, human studies, reviews, English language, MEDLINE journals, Middle-age population and veterinary sciences, with nearly equal gender representation.
Conclusion: This study found that the evidence-analysis utilizing a quantitative approach reflected the status of current practice-based evidence. Future analyses on diabetes should address journal-specific, population-specific and age-specific influences on EBDC.
Key words: Evidence-based diabetes care, Health informatics, Diabetes research, Diabetes evidence.
|
