Child and parental mental ability and glycaemic control in children with Type 1 diabetes

Aims Many psycho-social factors can affect the glycaemic control of childre n with Type 1 diabetes, but the influence of the intelligence of the child and their parents has not been reported. Methods Seventy-eight children and adolescents with Type 1 diabetes and the ir mothers performed standardized tests to assess psychometric intelligence . The children were aged (median (range)) 12.0 (5-17) years with duration o f diabetes 5.0 (1.0-13.0) years and required an insulin dose of (mean +/- s d) 1.0 +/- 0.3 U/kg per day. The children completed the Wide Range Achievem ent Test 3 reading test (WRAT3) and Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices ( RSPM). A mean annual HbA(1c) was calculated for each subject (8.6 +/- 1.4%) . The mothers performed the National Adult Reading Test (NART) and provided details of the occupation of the main wage-earner in the family from which social class (SC) was derived. Results The HbA(1c) of the child correlated with their age (r = 0.26, P = 0 .02), SC (Kendall's rank correlation, tau = 0.17, P = 0.03) and with the NA RT error score of their mother (r = 0.28, P = 0.01), but no correlation was observed with the child's WRAT3 or RSPM score. Stepwise regression reveale d that age and NART error score were the strongest independent determinants of glycaemic control (total adjusted r(2) = 0.117). Conclusions Parental intelligence appears to have a significant influence o n the glycaemic control of a child with Type 1 diabetes, accounting for 7.6 % of the reliable variance in HbA(1c).