Review

A critical review of mathematical models and data used in diabetology

A Boutayeb^*† and A Chetouani^†

• * Corresponding author: A Boutayeb x.boutayeb@menara.ma

• † Equal contributors

Author Affiliations

Department of Mathematics Faculty of Sciences, Oujda, Morocco

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BioMedical Engineering OnLine 2006, 5:43 doi:10.1186/1475-925X-5-43

Published: 29 June 2006

Abstract

The literature dealing with mathematical modelling for diabetes is abundant. During the last decades, a variety of models have been devoted to different aspects of diabetes, including glucose and insulin dynamics, management and complications prevention, cost and cost-effectiveness of strategies and epidemiology of diabetes in general. Several reviews are published regularly on mathematical models used for specific aspects of diabetes. In the present paper we propose a global overview of mathematical models dealing with many aspects of diabetes and using various tools. The review includes, side by side, models which are simple and/or comprehensive; deterministic and/or stochastic; continuous and/or discrete; using ordinary differential equations, partial differential equations, optimal control theory, integral equations, matrix analysis and computer algorithms.