Diabetes in South African older adults: prevalence and impact on quality of life and functional disability – as assessed using SAGE Wave 1 data

ABSTRACTBackground: Diabetes is a chronic disease with severe late complications. It is known to impact the quality of life and cause disability, which may affect an individual’s capacity to manage and maintain longer-term health and well-being.Objectives: To examine the prevalence of self-report diabetes, and association between diabetes and each of health-related quality of life and disability amongst South Africa’s older adults. To study both the direct relationship between diabetes and these two measures, as well as moderation effects, i.e. whether associations between other factors and these measures of well-being differed between individuals with diabetes and those without.Methods: Secondary analyses of data on participants aged 50 years and older from the Study on global AGEing and adult health (SAGE) in South Africa Wave 1 (2007–2008) were conducted. Prevalence of self-reported diabetes was assessed. Multivariable regressions describe the relationships between each of quality of life (WHOQoL) and ...