RESUMEN
Objective To use peer education to guide community diabetic patients to adopt diet therapy using food exchange method in order to explore effective method for diet therapy of diabetes mellitus. Meth-ods 91 diabetic patients were selected using simple sampling method and randomly divided into the peer ed-ucation(45 cases) and the common education group(46 cases), the two groups adopted food exchange method for diet therapy for 1 year. The blood glucose, blood lipid, glycosylated hemoglobin and body weight index were compared between the two groups using t test. Results The blood glucose, blood lipid, glycosylated hemoglobin and body weight index all decreased in the two groups after intervention, but the the decreased de-gree in the peer education group was more obvious. The fasting blood glucose, 2 hour postprandial blood glu-cose, glycosylated hemoglobin, triglyceride, low-donordensity lipid protein and body weight index in the peer education were lower thanthose of the common education group, but HDL-C was higher. Conclusions Peer education is more effective in health education of food exchange method.