Which Relationships Really Matter for Blood Glucose Control?

Diabetes patients’ perceived social support is consistently linked to their ability to manage blood glucose (HgA1c). However, little is known about which social relationships are linked to HgA1c. We use linear regression to examine how family, marital, and friendship support/strain predict HgA1c for diabetes patients. For the marital models we included only married participants (N = 121); For the family and friend models we included all participants (N = 160).

Results (Table 1) indicate that family and friend support/strain were not linked to HgA1c. However, marital strain/support were linked to HgA1c (higher strain indicated higher HgA1c and higher support indicated lower HgA1c).

Broad measures of social support are typically examined to understand and improve diabetes outcomes. But, our results suggest a need to focus on the marital relationship in order to improve HgA1c control. As the quality of marital relationship are mutable and brief couple interventions are cost-efficient, standard care could expand to include a marital relationship evaluation and/or a list of referral resources.

Further, the null findings for family and friend strain/support highlights the gap in our knowledge for aging single adults. The number of single adults is growing in the U.S. In the absence of marital support for these adults, we must understand if and to what extent their social environment is linked to HgA1c.