Determinants and Risk Factors of Adult Onset Diabetes and Hypertension in the Gaza Strip; Application of the Multivariate Regression Model

Diabetes and hypertension are increasing rapidly around the globe, including in Palestine. These are highly related diseases, so it is useful to study them simultaneously. This paper aimed to discuss the application of a multivariate linear regression model to identify the risk factors that have the greatest effects on the severity of adult onset diabetes and hypertension on Palestinian patients. It studied the effects of several medical characteristics of Palestinian patients in Gaza City, as independent variables, on three measurements indicating patients’ severity of diabetes and hypertension, as dependent variables. A real medical dataset of a random sample of 518 patients and 14 variables obtained from health clinics in Gaza City was used. The parameters of the model were estimated, and the multivariate analysis of variance was computed. For the sake of comparison, robust nonparametric methods based on M-estimators were also used, and similar results were obtained. The study concluded that the significant risk factors that had the greatest effects on the severity of diabetes and hypertension, according to both methods, were patients’ age, weight, cholesterol/HDL ratio, and triglycerides.