Where people get diabetes

Are there places where you are more likely to get diabetes if you live there?

We often hear statements like “living in the city is sick” or “in rural areas you live more peacefully.” What is true in these phrases? Is it just a feeling? Or is the impact that environments have on health real?

A recent study, published in the academic journal Geospatial Health, and carried out by Argentine experts, has confirmed that the environment and cardiometabolic diseases, such as diabetes, hypertension and metabolic syndrome, are strictly linked.

“The most common thing to associate the environment with health are vector-borne diseases, such as dengue. In this case, we focus on more social diseases, which are usually characterized by habits such as a sedentary lifestyle, poor diet, among other unhealthy habits. In this study, we demonstrated that this is present, but we also wanted to study the environment around people,” Matías Scavuzzo, co-author of the study, a fellow from the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET) with place working at the Gulich Institute, belonging to the National Commission for Space Activities (CONAE) and researcher at the Human Nutrition Research Center (CenINH), in Argentina all these institutions.

Specialists from the Mario Gulich Institute of Higher Space Studies, the National University of Córdoba (UNC) and the Health Sciences Research Institute (INICSA) have also participated in the study, all of these institutions in Argentina. The research staff also included Micaela Campero, Verónica Andreo, María Sol Mileo, Micaela Franzois, María Georgina Oberto, Carla González Rodríguez and María Daniela Defagó.

The new study is innovative, given that there are not many works that explore the associations between environmental dimensions and health, particularly cardiometabolic diseases. The general objective was to explore the presence of this type of conditions, with a focus on diabetes and metabolic syndrome, analyze the associated risk factors and the relationship with the characteristics of the environment, based on information generated with remote sensors and field data. .

As indicated by the research team, the project involved the Cardiology Service of the National Hospital of Clinics, of the National University of Córdoba, where 345 patients were analyzed based on their clinical and dietary history, coming from Córdoba capital and the Metropolitan Area.

“Based on this data, we focus on analyzing the environment where these people live. We analyze, with satellite images from the Landsat 8 Mission, the level of vegetation around the homes, the level of humidity there is to see what that soil is like, if there is humidity in the vegetation, in addition to seeing how urban or rural it is where they live,” Scavuzzo told CTyS-UNLaM.

“We saw, indeed, that, in homes where people live with greater green coverage and lower urban index, our models predicted that there is a lower probability of occurrence of, for example, diabetes. On the other hand, in ultra-urbanized homes – which often encourage a sedentary lifestyle – the probabilities of this disease occurring increased,” explained the main author of the work.

Map of the local incidence of diabetes in the area of ​​the Argentine city of Córdoba. (Image: CONAE)

As a main objective, the specialists propose, in the future, to geospatialize the information collected to generate a “Geographic Information System”, which can help demonstrate that the environments where we live explain some of the diseases we contract.

“The idea is to be able to geospatialize a large amount of information and put it into a tangible and visible product (a map) so that decision makers can quickly focus on some of the aspects discussed and direct public policies and resources in that direction,” he said. the graduate in Nutrition.

In this sense, he continued: “It happens that, many times, a large-volume statistical report full of graphs is never finished reading; On the other hand, with a map much less time is spent understanding the situation and actions can be taken in a more practical way.”

“This type of work, which results in a tool that facilitates the generation of public policies, is aimed at achieving and strengthening scientific, spatial and environmental sovereignty, which can guarantee the right to health, education and security, food, among others,” concluded Scavuzzo. (Source: Agustina Lima / CTyS-UNLaM Agency)