Stressful life events and psychological dysfunctions before the onset of type 1 diabetes mellitus.

AIM

To test the hypothesis that stressful life events and psychological dysfunction increase the risk for development of type 1 diabetes mellitus (DM1).

METHOD

A case-control study comprising 105 children with DM1 and 210 controls matched by age +/- 1 year), sex and place of residence. Conditional univariate and multivariate logistic regressions were used to analyze the data.

RESULTS

After adjustment for possible confounders, the following factors were positively related to DM1: parents' job-related issues changed or lost job (odds ratio [OR] 11.5, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.6-81.8); other severe life events--severe accident, hospitalization or death of close friend, quarrels between parents, war in republics of former Yugoslavia, near-drowning in a pool, falling down, unhurt participant of an accident (OR 68.5, 95% CI 13.5-349.0); other minor life events--conflicts with parents/teacher/neighbors, lost in town, physical attack, failure in competition, penalty, examination, death of pet, presence at lightning strike, thrown out of dwelling (OR 32.7, 95% CI 6.3-169.6); and learning problems (OR 17.5, 95% CI 4.3-71.6).

CONCLUSION

These results support the hypothesis that stressful life events and psychological dysfunctions are associated with DM1.