EVALUATION OF THE REFERRED PAST HISTORY O F DIABETES IN WOMEN

In clinical practice the presence of a positive family history of diab etes mellitus is one of the criteria to perform a glucose screening te st. However it has been shown not be always reliable. The aim of this study is to verify the concordance between the data referred by a grou p of daughters about the existence of diabetes mellitus in both parent s, the data given by their parents, and a corroboration by blood gluco se testing of the parents. A total of 82 triads (father, mother and da ughter) were studied. The daughters were healthy and belonged to a coh ort of perinatal studies of the Instituto Nacional de Perinatologia in Mexico City; they were not pregnant and had both parents alive, who a greed to participate in the study. Each daughter was asked about her p arents history of diabetes having three options as an answer: yes, no, do not know. The same information about themselves was asked to the p arents separately, not giving a chance to the members of the triad to communicate among themselves. The necessary glucose tests were perform ed to integrate a diagnosis by accepted international criteria. A chi- square test was used to compare the data referred by parents and daugh ters; agreement percentage (kappa values) were calculated. A prespecif ied order test was performed to the answers given and evaluated by occ urrence rates (Bartholomew's test). In the latter analysis there were significant differences (p < 0.001) between the answer given by the pa rents, daughter and the confirmed blood glucose values. No differences were found between what the parents said, nor in what they said and w hat the daughters answered.