Liu, J., Poon, JL., Bispham, J., Perez-Nieves, M., Hughes, A., Chapman, K., Mitchell, B., Hood, K., Snoek, F., & Fisher, L.

Background

Fear of Hypoglycemia (FoH) in people with diabetes has a significant impact on their quality of life, psychological well-being, and self-management of disease. There are a few questionnaires assessing FoH in people living with diabetes, but they are more often used in research than clinical practice. This study aimed to develop and validate a short and actionable FoH screener for adults living with type 1 diabetes (T1D) for use in routine clinical practice.

Methods

We developed an initial screener based on literature review and, interviews with healthcare providers (HCPs) and people with T1D. We developed a cross-sectional web-based survey, which was then conducted to examine the reliability and validity of the screener. Adults (aged ≥ 18 years) with diagnosis of T1D for ≥ 1 year were recruited from the T1D Exchange Registry (August–September 2020). The validation analyses were conducted using exploratory factor analyses, correlation, and multivariable regression models for predicting cut-off scores for the final screener.

Results

The final FoH screener comprised nine items assessing two domains, “worry” (6-items) and “avoidance behavior” (three items), in 592 participants. The FoH screener showed good internal consistency (Cronbach’s α = 0.88). The screener also demonstrated high correlations (r = 0.71–0.75) with the Hypoglycemia Fear Survey and moderate correlations with depression, anxiety, and diabetes distress scales (r = 0.44–0.66). Multivariable regression analysis showed that higher FoH screener scores were significantly associated with higher glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) (b = 0.04) and number of comorbidities (b = 0.03).

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