Short-term effectiveness of nutrition therapy to treat type 2 diabetes in low-income and middle-income countries: systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials

Study answer

What this study found

At 3 months, nutrition interventions showed improvement in glycaemic control with HbA1c reduced by 1.11% (95% CI: -1.64 to -0.59) and fasting blood glucose reduced by 23.57 mg/dL (95% CI: -44.3 to -2.84). At 6 months, results were less clear, indicating the need for further research on long-term effects. The overall certainty of evidence was very low due to high risk of bias and poor methodological quality.

Study & population

Four randomized controlled trials involving 463 participants from Malaysia, Iran, and South Africa were included.

Intervention

This review examined the evidence for the effectiveness of nutrition therapy for managing type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) in low- and middle-income countries, focusing specifically on the impact on glycaemic control.

Key limitation

The review highlighted a lack of sufficient trials with long-term follow-up and noted the very low certainty of the evidence.

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Original abstract