Tropical Journal of Pharmaceutical Research

Original Research Article | OPEN ACCESS

Evaluation of Smoking Status among Diabetes Patients in the State of Penang, Malaysia

Ali Q Blebil¹ , Syed AS Sulaiman¹, Mohamed A Hassali², Juman A Dujaili¹, Karuppiah Subramaniam³, Nor A Aziz⁴

¹Discipline of Clinical Pharmacy; ²Discipline of Social and Administrative Pharmacy, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 11800 Penang; ³Departemnt of Outpatient Clinic; ⁴Department of Endocrinology and Diabetes, Penang General Hospital, Jalan Residensi, 10990 Penang, Malaysia.

For correspondence:- Ali Blebil Email: aliblebil@yahoo.com Tel:+0060143427582

Received: 3 August 2012 Accepted: 8 April 2013 Published: 12 June 2013

Citation: Blebil AQ, Sulaiman SA, Hassali MA, Dujaili JA, Subramaniam K, Aziz NA. Evaluation of Smoking Status among Diabetes Patients in the State of Penang, Malaysia. Trop J Pharm Res 2013; 12(3):445-448 doi: 10.4314/tjpr.v12i3.26

© 2013 The authors.
This is an Open Access article that uses a funding model which does not charge readers or their institutions for access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0) and the Budapest Open Access Initiative (http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read), which permit unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited..

Abstract

Purpose: To determine the prevalence of smoking among diabetes patients attending Diabetes Outpatient Clinic at Penang General Hospital, Penang, Malaysia.

Methods: A cross-sectional study was undertaken to assess the smoking status of all the patients that registered at the above clinic. The data were extracted from the diabetes patients’ medical records. Between June 1^st 2010 and June 30^th 2011, all medical records of type 1 and 2 diabetes patients were reviewed to assess the prevalence of smoking.

Results: Of 2547 diabetes patients, 447 patients were excluded from the analysis as their smoking status was unknown, leaving 2100 diabetes patients whose smoking status was determined. The prevalence of smoking in diabetes patients was estimated at 8 %. Smokers had shorter duration of diabetes mellitus than non-smokers (6.70 ± 5.16 vs. 8.42 ± 6.66; respectively, p = 0.001). Smoking was significantly associated with male gender and younger age (p < 0.0001). Chinese diabetes patients were the most prevalent race among smokers, compared with Malay and Indian (50.3, 30.5 and 19.2 %, respectively); however, the differences were statistically not significant , p = 0.219).

Conclusion: The prevalence of smoking among diabetes patients of the Malaysian clinic at Penang studied was low. On the other hand, smoking status was inadequately documented and no information was available on the history of tobacco use in diabetes smokers.

Keywords: Prevalence, Smoking status, Diabetes mellitus, Malaysia