BGAThome WA - trial underway

The trial of this internet programe is now underway. Results will be available at the DRFWA Research Symposium in November 2010

Associate Professor Tim Skinner and Diabetes WA

This project will analyze whether an interactive internet program in WA will help reduce hypoglycaemia, fear, unawareness and distress for people with type 1 diabetes.

Fear of hypoglycaemia, (the most commonly reported anxiety by people with type 1 diabetes) and hypoglycaemia unawareness (which can result in serious accidents and loss of driving license) are both major causes of distress and anxiety, and lead individuals to maintain elevated blood glucose (BG) levels.  Further, due to financial, motivational or other constraints, patients are often unable to perform self-monitoring of blood glucose (SMBG) frequently enough to make moment-to-moment treatment decisions.

Consequently, individuals with type 1 diabetes often rely on symptoms and estimates of their BG levels to decide whether to eat, exercise vigorously, perform SMBG, or even drive and/or perform other potentially dangerous activities. Blood glucose awareness training (BGAT) is a psycho-educational programme, designed to improve the accuracy of patients’ detection and interpretation of relevant blood glucose (BG) symptoms and other cues. Thirteen U.S. and European studies have documented the benefits of BGAT, which include improvements in accuracy of BG estimates, reduction in ketoacidosis, severe hypoglycemia, hypoglycemia-related driving mishaps and fear of hypoglycemia. However, the program is an intensive psycho-educational program run over 8 weeks, making it difficult for many people to commit to and inaccessible for large numbers of people with type 1 diabetes who do not live close to specialist diabetes centres. 

Therefore an internet based version of the program (BGAThome) has been developed, which has been demonstrated to be effective in increasing blood glucose estimation accuracy and fear of hypoglycaemia.   This project seeks to adapt the internet based BGAT program for the West Australian population, and conduct an initial pre-post evaluation of its benefits. If this project shows that participants benefited from the program, Diabetes WA have committed themselves to hosting the program and making it available to its members.

This project has the potential to offer a new service for people with diabetes, one that is readily accessible to anyone with diabetes regardless of their geographical or socio-economic resources.

The DRFWA would like to thank our many generous supporters for enabling this important research project to get of the ground. If you would like to support research into diabetes please click here....................................