The relationship of climate and diabetes mellitus prevalence with applying spatial analysis; An Ecological study

Objectives: The aims of this study were investigating the association between Diabetes Mellitus (DM) prevalence and climate conditions and finding probable hot-spot areas.Materials and methods: This ecological study conducted on disease surveillance system of DM data from rural area of two Kashan and Aran-O-Bidgol counties. It is an observational study on the disease surveillance data of health registry system including population characteristics, screened DM cases in 2016. Moran’s I and Getis-Ord’s index were applied to explore the hot-spot areas, and the spatial regression model were conducted for finding the relationship between climate and DM prevalence whilst adjusting some confounders, using GIS software.Results: The information of 48 cities and villages with 26,800 of ≥30 years people located in three mountainous, plain and dry-desert climates were analyzed. The crude DM prevalence ranged 0-45.4%. The analysis revealed evident hot-spot areas and inverse relationship between altitude and DM prevalence (P 0.05).   Conclusions: Residences of dry-desert climate had high DM prevalence and there was a significant inverse relationship between altitude and DM prevalence.