Background: Basal metabolic rate (BMR) measures the energy utilized by the body at rest. A growing body of literature reports increased BMR in people with type 2 diabetes (T2D), after controlling for sex, age and weight. We used blood glucose (BG) measurements and BMR values from the Apple Watch collected in the One Drop app, to measure the correlation of BMR and BG for the population as a whole, and for individuals over time.

Method: Data included over 48,000 person-months of blood-glucose and BMR measurements from 5,585 people with T2D. BG was self-monitored except for 186 people who provided continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) data through Dexcom’s API. BMR values were summed daily and correlated with 30-day average BG for the study population by linear regression. For each person using CGM, we computed the Pearson correlation coefficient of BMR with Time-in-Range (TIR), and used a random effects model to compute the overall correlation and associated p-value.

Results: The correlation coefficient of 30-day average BMR with 30-day average BG was 0.07 (p < 10-6), and of BMR with 30-day TIR was -0.26 (p < 10-6). The average correlation coefficient for individuals of BMR with TIR was -0.23±0.38. After applying the random effects model, the overall adjusted coefficient for individuals was -0.18 (p < 10-6).

Conclusion: BMR and BG measurements collected in the One Drop app for 5,585 people with T2D show significant correlation of BMR with monthly BG levels at the population level and for individuals over time. This is among the largest scale analyses of such correlation, and the first one to use highly available BMR measurements from the Apple Watch.

Disclosure

Y. Wexler: None. D. Goldner: Employee; Self; One Drop.

© 2021 by the American Diabetes Association
2021
Readers may use this article as long as the work is properly cited, the use is educational and not for profit, and the work is not altered. More information is available at http://www.diabetesjournals.org/content/license.