Diabetes mellitus is a group of common metabolic disorders that share the phenotype of hyperglycaemia. Like most other chronic disorders, diabetes increases the excretion of minerals and other nutrients. Magnesium is a micronutrient and the second most abundant intracellular cation whose concentration remains remarkably constant in healthy subjects. It is known to activate enzymes and act as important cofactor in various biochemical reactions. Also, Magnesium is required for insulin secretion and for proper insulin functioning via tyrosine kinase activity at the receptor level. Therefore, through this study an attempt has been made to evaluate the association between serum magnesium levels and the glycaemic status of these patients as measured in the form of HbA1c.
Material: The study is conducted in the General Medicine ward of a tertiary care hospital in Assam for 4 months, which included 140 patients of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus. Patients were subjected to history and examination, investigations and analysed using simple statistical methods.
Observation: In the present study, HbA1C of >7% was taken as poor glycaemic control and the mean magnesium level in this group was 1.46±0.50 mg/dl and in the group with <7% indicated good glycaemic control, the mean magnesium level was 1.48±0.53 mg/dl. On doing t-test for independent means, the p-value was found to be significant at <0.00001. This shows that patients with poor glycaemic control(HbA1c >7%) have lesser serum magnesium levels as compared to the patients with good glycaemic control(HbA1c <7%).
Conclusion: The present study investigated the serum magnesium levels in patients with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus and its association with glycated haemoglobin (HbA1c) levels. It was found that the level of magnesium was lower in patients with higher glycated hemoglobin levels. Therefore hypomagnesemia was more in patients with poor glycaemic control. Based on this study, it can be said that magnesium levels can be taken as an indicator of the glycaemic status in the diabetics. Oral magnesium supplementation can be advised in such patients.
© Journal of the Association of Physicians of India 2011.