This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
Pet ownership may improve diabetes self-care in adolescents
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
Pet ownership can have a beneficial effect on adolescents with type 1 diabetes, with younger children in particular having improved glycemic control after several months spent caring for a pet fish, according to research in The Diabetes Educator.
In a pilot program designed to test behavioral intervention in adolescents with type 1 diabetes, researchers found the structured care of a pet fish helped to improve HbA1c levels by providing activity-based cues to better perform diabetes self-care behaviors.
“Teenagers are one of the most difficult patient populations to treat, mainly because of the many psychosocial factors associated with that stage of life,” Olga Gupta, MD, an assistant professor of pediatrics and internal medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern, said in a press release. “We learned that instructing families to associate regular pet fish care with the child’s standard diabetes care significantly improved their HbA1c levels.”
Olga Gupta
Gupta, Louise Maranda, PhD, of the department of quantitative health science at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worchester, and colleagues analyzed data from 28 adolescents aged 10 to 17 years from a pediatric diabetes clinic with type 1 diabetes and an HbA1c greater than 8.5%. Within the cohort, 16 children were randomly assigned to care for a pet fish for 3 months; 12 children were instructed to proceed with their usual diabetes self-care routine. Researchers chose a fish to minimize the burden of cost and pet care placed on families who agreed to participate in the study.
Researchers gave participants in the pet care arm a fish bowl and equipment, a $5 gift card to purchase a fish (Betta splendens), instructions for caring for a fish and recommendations to set up their fish bowl in their rooms if possible. Researchers instructed participants in the pet care arm to check their blood glucose readings when feeding the fish twice daily — after waking and before bedtime. Researchers instructed participants to review their glucose logs with their caregiver weekly while changing one-quarter of the water in the fish bowl.
Researchers found that participants in the pet care group decreased their HbA1c level by 0.5% after 3 months compared with participants in the control group who saw a 0.8% increase in HbA1c (P = .04). Participants aged 10 to 13 years responded better, with a 1.5% HbA1c reduction compared with a 0.6% reduction among participants aged 14 to 17 years (P = .04).
“Associating diabetes self-care tasks with routine, consistent daily activities may be another tool in the diabetes educator toolbox that can be used to enhance compliance and ultimately improve glycemic control,” the researchers wrote. “The identification of this successful behavioral intervention justifies conducting ongoing studies to validate these findings in a larger cohort for a longer follow-up period, pinpointing the mechanisms leading to the improvement, using different household pets and monitoring the changes in health service utilization.” – by Regina Schaffer
Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts