How does having diabetes affect ADL disability in elders?

Carolina Rivera, Universidad de Costa Rica
Mirela C.S. Camargos, Fundação João Pinheiro

This paper aims to examine the relationship between the prevalence of diabetes and the physical disability incidence of the elderly population, in Costa Rica. The analysis is made after controlling for demographic and socioeconomic factors, as well as other diseases. In order to achieve the objectives of this paper, we used information collected by the study of Healthy Aging and Longevity (CRELES, CCP University of Costa Rica). This data-set contains many socio-demographic and health information of elders. The method employed in the analysis consists in a multivariate logistic regression, which catches the effect of the prevalence of diabetes in the incidence of physical disability, for Activities of Daily Life (ADL). The study shows that there is a high risk of developing ADL disabilities for diabetics, after controlling for numerous variables.