Vitamin D Status in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus: Relationship with Glycemic Control

Objective: The objective of this study is to assess the serum vit D3 levels in type 2 diabetic patients and its association with glycemic index, duration of disease and other anthropometric and metabolic profile variables in our region.Methods: It is a cross-sectional study in which 467 type 2 diabetic individuals above the age of 18 years were selected from the out-patient department of a tertiary care hospital in Karachi, using convenient sampling technique over a period of six months. Only those patients who were already diagnosed and labelled as type 2 diabetic on the basis of Hba1C were enrolled after taking an informed consent. Patients with any other comorbid were excluded from the study.Results: The mean vitamin D, and HbA1c levels of the sample were 12.44(+9.06) ng/dl, and 8.47(+2.1) % respectively. It can be seen from the table that 45.8 percent of the total sample have normal levels of Vitamin D, while 20.3 percent were insufficient and a good number of patients had deficiency of vitamin D i.e. 33.9% The data also showed that out of the total sample, 33.6% had uncontrolled diabetes as evaluated by HbA1c measurement. Serum Vitamin D levels showed a weak inverse correlation with glycemic control (r = –0.15, p < 0.05) and duration of diabetes (r = –0.162, p <0.05). Duration of diabetes was positively associated with serum creatinine (r = 0.29, p < 0.05), while most other correlations were weak. In multivariable regression analysis, serum Vitamin D levels wereindependently and inversely associated with HbA1c (â = –0.131, p = 0.013).Conclusion: The study confirms a statistically significant but clinically weak inverse association between vit D3 and HbA1c in patients with type 2 diabetes. This outcome is consistent with emerging data indicating that vitamin D acts primarily as a metabolic biomarker rather than a therapeutic intervention.