Data-based modeling for hypoglycemia prediction: Importance, trends, and implications for clinical practice

Front Public Health. 2023 Jan 26:11:1044059. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2023.1044059. eCollection 2023.

Abstract

Background and objective: Hypoglycemia is a key barrier to achieving optimal glycemic control in people with diabetes, which has been proven to cause a set of deleterious outcomes, such as impaired cognition, increased cardiovascular disease, and mortality. Hypoglycemia prediction has come to play a role in diabetes management as big data analysis and machine learning (ML) approaches have become increasingly prevalent in recent years. As a result, a review is needed to summarize the existing prediction algorithms and models to guide better clinical practice in hypoglycemia prevention.

Materials and methods: PubMed, EMBASE, and the Cochrane Library were searched for relevant studies published between 1 January 2015 and 8 December 2022. Five hypoglycemia prediction aspects were covered: real-time hypoglycemia, mild and severe hypoglycemia, nocturnal hypoglycemia, inpatient hypoglycemia, and other hypoglycemia (postprandial, exercise-related).

Results: From the 5,042 records retrieved, we included 79 studies in our analysis. Two major categories of prediction models are identified by an overview of the chosen studies: simple or logistic regression models based on clinical data and data-based ML models (continuous glucose monitoring data is most commonly used). Models utilizing clinical data have identified a variety of risk factors that can lead to hypoglycemic events. Data-driven models based on various techniques such as neural networks, autoregressive, ensemble learning, supervised learning, and mathematical formulas have also revealed suggestive features in cases of hypoglycemia prediction.

Conclusion: In this study, we looked deep into the currently established hypoglycemia prediction models and identified hypoglycemia risk factors from various perspectives, which may provide readers with a better understanding of future trends in this topic.

Keywords: data-based algorithms or models; diabetes mellitus; hypoglycemia; machine learning; prediction.

Publication types

  • Systematic Review
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Blood Glucose
  • Blood Glucose Self-Monitoring
  • Diabetes Mellitus, Type 1* / chemically induced
  • Diabetes Mellitus, Type 1* / drug therapy
  • Humans
  • Hypoglycemia* / chemically induced
  • Hypoglycemia* / drug therapy
  • Hypoglycemia* / prevention & control
  • Hypoglycemic Agents / therapeutic use

Substances

  • Blood Glucose
  • Hypoglycemic Agents

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (2018YFC2001005).