Life Sciences, Soka University of America, Aliso Viejo, CA, United States.
Front Public Health. 2023 Jul 13;11:1159024. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2023.1159024. eCollection 2023.
Type 2 diabetes (T2D) is a growing public health burden throughout the world. Many people looking for information on how to prevent T2D will search on diabetes websites. Multiple dietary factors have a significant association with T2D risk, such as high intake of added sugars, refined carbohydrates, saturated fat, and red meat or processed meat; and decreased intake of dietary fiber, and fruits/vegetables. Despite this dietary information being available in the scientific literature, it is unclear whether this information is available in gray literature (websites).
In this study, we evaluate the use of specific terms from diabetes websites that are significantly associated with causes/risk factors and preventions for T2D from three term categories: (A) dietary factors, (B) nondietary nongenetic (lifestyle-associated) factors, and (C) genetic (non-modifiable) factors. We also evaluate the effect of website type (business, government, nonprofit) on term usage among websites.
We used web scraping and coding tools to quantify the use of specific terms from 73 diabetes websites. To determine the effect of term category and website type on the usage of specific terms among 73 websites, a repeated measures general linear model was performed.
We found that dietary risk factors that are significantly associated with T2D (e.g., sugar, processed carbohydrates, dietary fat, fruits/vegetables, fiber, processed meat/red meat) were mentioned in significantly fewer websites than either nondietary nongenetic factors (e.g., obesity, physical activity, dyslipidemia, blood pressure) or genetic factors (age, family history, ethnicity). Among websites that provided "eat healthy" guidance, one third provided zero dietary factors associated with type 2 diabetes, and only 30% provided more than two specific dietary factors associates with type 2 diabetes. We also observed that mean percent usage of all terms associated with T2D causes/risk factors and preventions was significantly lower among government websites compared to business websites and nonprofit websites.
Diabetes websites need to increase their usage of dietary factors when discussing causes/risk factors and preventions for T2D; as dietary factors are modifiable and strongly associated with all nondietary nongenetic risk factors, in addition to T2D risk.
2 型糖尿病（T2D）是全球日益严重的公共卫生负担。许多人在寻找预防 T2D 的信息时，会在糖尿病网站上搜索。许多饮食因素与 T2D 风险有显著关联，例如高糖、精制碳水化合物、饱和脂肪和红肉或加工肉的摄入；以及膳食纤维、水果/蔬菜的摄入减少。尽管这些饮食信息在科学文献中都有，但尚不清楚这些信息是否在灰色文献（网站）中可用。
在这项研究中，我们从三个术语类别评估了糖尿病网站中与 T2D 的病因/危险因素和预防相关的特定术语的使用情况：（A）饮食因素，（B）非饮食非遗传（与生活方式相关）因素，和（C）遗传（不可改变）因素。我们还评估了网站类型（商业、政府、非营利组织）对网站中术语使用的影响。
我们使用网络爬虫和编码工具来量化 73 个糖尿病网站中特定术语的使用情况。为了确定术语类别和网站类型对 73 个网站中特定术语使用的影响，我们进行了重复测量的一般线性模型。
我们发现，与 T2D 显著相关的饮食危险因素（例如，糖、加工碳水化合物、饮食脂肪、水果/蔬菜、纤维、加工肉/红肉）在网站中的提及率明显低于非饮食非遗传因素（例如，肥胖、身体活动、血脂异常、血压）或遗传因素（年龄、家族史、种族）。在提供“健康饮食”指导的网站中，三分之一的网站没有提供与 2 型糖尿病相关的饮食因素，只有 30%的网站提供了两个以上与 2 型糖尿病相关的特定饮食因素。我们还观察到，与 T2D 病因/危险因素和预防相关的所有术语的平均使用百分比在政府网站中明显低于商业网站和非营利组织网站。
糖尿病网站在讨论 T2D 的病因/危险因素和预防措施时，需要增加对饮食因素的使用；因为饮食因素是可改变的，并且与所有非饮食非遗传危险因素以及 T2D 风险密切相关。
