Assessment of Muscle Status among Children and Adolescents with Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus

Background: Hand grip strength (HGS) is a non-invasive approach for the assessment of muscle strength in diabetic patients, and it is a good tool in differentiating diabetic patients with good control and those with poor glycaemic control.
Objective: to evaluate the muscle status including (skeletal muscle mass and muscle force) among children and adolescents with T1DM using non-invasive HGS and BCM in relation to diabetes-related parameters, which include age at onset, duration of T1DM, average total daily dose of insulin, level of glycaemic control (average HbA1c % level), and lipid profile.
Patients and methods: This is a cross-sectional controlled study with an analytical component that was carried out on 200 children in the period between October 2022 to October 2023.  All children in this study were subjected to medical history, complete general examination, anthropometric measures, body composition measurement, and HGS measurement. The patients’ group was subjected additionally to detailed medical history related to diabetes, full neurological examination, and biochemical laboratory tests.
Results: There were significant higher median values of HGS and HGS Z-score among diabetes than the control group (p<0.001). There was a significant positive correlation between HGS and HGS z-score with diabetes duration and a significant negative correlation between HGS and HGS z-score with HbA1c.
Conclusion: HGS values were higher in T1DM children compared to controls and higher values were detected with long duration compared to others with shorter duration of disease. HGS was good in differentiating between diabetic cases with good control and those with poor glycaemic control.