ASSESSMENT OF THE EFFECTS OF AIR POLLUTANTS ON BLOOD GLUCOSE CONTROL IN PATIENTS WITH TYPE 2 DIABETES

Abstract. Smart care is one of the elements of smart city, which has attracted the attention of many scholars to identify threats to the community's health. Air pollution has a significant contribution to diseases development such as type 2 diabetes, which is a major component of the global disease burden. The objective of this study is to investigate the effect of exposure to air pollutants such as NO₂, PM_2.5, and PM₁₀ during 2016 on blood glucose control in Type 2 diabetic patients living in Tehran, capital of Iran. In this study, 124 diabetic patients of type 2 and partial correlation, odds ratio, and one-way Analysis of Variance have been considered to determine the effect of pollutants on the control of blood glucose in the patients. The results of this study verified that a significant positive correlation exists between NO₂ and blood glucose in women (r = 0.43; p-value < 0.001). There was also a relatively low but significant correlation in the female group between PM_2.5 and blood glucose have been identified (r = 0.27; p-value = 0.033). No significant correlation was found between pollutant PM₁₀ and blood glucose in the patients. It is noteworthy that no correlation was found in the men's group for any of the pollutants.