Healthy eating helps reverse metabolic syndrome
(Reuters Health) – People with metabolic syndrome — a cluster of risk factors for heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes — have a better chance of reversing it if they stick to a healthy diet, a new study shows.
While it seems obvious that eating healthy would make you healthier, the findings are important because they show it’s a person’s dietary pattern, not just individual components of their diet, that matters, Dr. Alice Lichtenstein, an expert on diet and heart health from Tufts University in Boston, who was not involved in the new study, told Reuters Health.
A person is considered to have metabolic syndrome if they have three or more of the following risk factors: excess belly fat; high triglyceride levels (a harmful blood fat); low levels of “good” HDL cholesterol; high blood pressure; and either high blood sugar levels or type 2 diabetes.
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Weight-loss surgery cuts diabetics’ costs: study
(Reuters) – Three-fourths of obese diabetics who had weight-loss surgery were able to quit taking diabetes drugs within six months of their operation, U.S. researchers said on Monday, citing a new study.
They said the surgery may eliminate the need for chronic medications to treat the disease and reduce overall healthcare costs, providing a strong argument for insurance companies to pay for the procedures.
Once developed, diabetes and obesity are rarely reversed, Dr. Martin Makary of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and colleagues reported in Archives of Surgery, a medical journal.
“Until a successful non-surgical means for preventing and reversing obesity is developed, bariatric surgery appears to be the only intervention that can result in a sustained reversal of both obesity and type 2 diabetes mellitus in most patients receiving it,” they wrote.
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Eye disorder common among diabetic adults
(Reuters Health) – Nearly 30 percent of U.S. diabetics over the age of 40 may have a diabetes-related eye disorder, with 4 percent of this population affected severely enough that their vision is threatened, suggests a new study.
The condition, known as diabetic retinopathy, involves damage to the eye’s retina and is the leading cause of new cases of legal blindness among U.S. adults between 20 and 74 years old. It also costs the U.S. approximately $500 million every year.
“The number of people with diabetes is increasing in this country,” lead researcher Dr. Xinzhi Zhang, of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, told Reuters Health.
Yet, he added, estimates of how many Americans suffer from diabetic retinopathy remain more than a decade old. Is this condition on the rise too? Or is screening and treatment keeping it under control?
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Wireless sensor watches blood sugar for diabetics
(Reuters) – Researchers have developed an implantable sensor that measures blood sugar continuously and transmits the information without wires — a milestone, they said, in diabetes treatment.
The device worked in one pig for more than a year and in another for nearly 10 months with no trouble, they reported in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
It takes the diabetes field a step closer to development of an “artificial pancreas” — a device that can replace natural functions to control how the body handles blood sugar.
And it would be handy for people who need to check blood sugar daily, such as patients with type 2 diabetes, the team at the University of California San Diego and nearby privately held GlySens Inc wrote.
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New therapies slow vision loss in diabetics
Researchers have found two new treatments that could slow the progression of vision loss in high-risk adults with type 2 diabetes. The vision loss, called diabetic retinopathy, is caused by damage to the blood vessels in the retina. In diabetics with retinopathy, the blood vessels can leak and causing the retina to swell. Abnormal new blood vessels can also develop which causes vision loss.
In the largest study of its kind to date, trial investigators followed 2,865 type 2 diabetics. Just under 50 percent of patients had mild retinopathy at the start of the trial. Over a four-year period, researchers took retinal photographs that recorded any changes in the blood vessels and the progression of retinopathy.
“Many people with diabetes have microvascular problems, which can result in problems with the kidneys and amputation of toes and feet, and the only place that you can directly observe the microvasculature is in the back of the eyes,” said Walter Ambrosius, Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, and principal investigator of the ACCORD Eye Study. “What we have seen in the eyes is potentially an indicator of what is happening in other parts of the body.”
Patients in the study were given three types of treatments. Therapy to control and normalize their blood sugar, treatments to control blood pressure and bring it within normal levels and a combination of lipid and fenofibrate therapy. Fenofibrates are cholesterol-lowering drugs that lower triglycerides-fat stored in the body–and raise HDL levels, also known as good cholesterol.
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Q+A: Should Avandia be pulled? U.S. panel says no
(Reuters) – GlaxoSmithKline’s diabetes drug Avandia should stay on the market, but with extra warnings about heart dangers, U.S. advisers recommended in a dramatic series of votes on Wednesday.
The 33 outside experts convened by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration cast 20 votes for various options that would allow Avandia to stay on the market despite concerns over heart risks.
The agency will make the final decision but usually follows the advice of its advisory committees.
Here are some questions and answers about Avandia:
WHAT IS THE PROBLEM WITH THIS DRUG?
Diabetes is a serious chronic illness and is a direct cause of heart disease, but several studies have shown that Avandia, known generically as rosiglitazone, may itself damage the heart. Both Avandia and rival drug Actos, made by Takeda Pharmaceutical Co and known generically as pioglitazone, raise the risk of heart failure.
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Diabetics Obesity Surgery: Stomach Stapling for the Not-So-Overweight?
(CBS/AP) Stomach stapling for the not-so-overweight? If you have diabetes and are battling a mid-size bulge it might just help.
For years, doctors have noted that obese people who undergo bariatric surgery – stomach stapling and the like – often experience a reversal of their diabetes. Many achieve normal blood sugar and are able to ditch their medications.
Could diabetes sufferers who aren’t obese, just a bit overweight, benefit as well?
It’s a big issue. According to the American Diabetes Association, 24 million Americans have the disease. The cost of treatment and lost work is $175 billion.
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Intensive diabetes treatments give mixed results
(Reuters) – Aggressive drug treatment to lower blood sugar, blood pressure and cholesterol in diabetics does little to prevent heart disease and strokes, but it does help prevent diabetic eye disease, nerve and kidney disease, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.
The five-year, U.S. government-backed study, presented at the American Diabetes Association meeting on Tuesday, was stopped temporarily in February 2008 because there were 20 percent more deaths among diabetics with heart problems who got intensive treatment to lower their blood sugar compared to those who were treated more conservatively.
The patients getting the tougher treatment were transferred into the gentler group and the trial continued.
The latest long-term results show that using more drugs and adding a fibrate drug like Abbott Laboratories’ TriCor to statin cholesterol drugs did little to prevent heart problems.
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Half doses of diabetes drugs can prevent disease
(Reuters) – Low doses of GlaxoSmithKline’s diabetes drug Avandia combined with metformin can prevent diabetes without causing the most common side-effects, Canadian doctors reported on Wednesday.
Taking half a dose of Glaxo’s combination pill reduced by two-thirds the risk that patients would go from having high blood sugar — pre-diabetes — to full type-2 diabetes, the researchers reported in the Lancet medical journal.
Fourteen percent of the patients treated with the drugs developed diabetes after four years, compared to 39 percent of those given placebo, the researchers found.
The effect would likely be the same with Avandia’s rival drug in the same class, Takeda’s Actos, said Dr. Bernard Zinman of Mount Sinai Hospital at the University of Toronto, who led the study.
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Video Game for Kids with Diabetes
Children with diabetes have a hard time, as do their parents who have to try and coax them to allow their blood sugar levels to be tested with needles daily. One father of such a child invented a video game program to incentivize his child to allow testing. Bayer purchased his company and now offers Didget, a glucose meter that syncs with the Nintendo DS and rewards players for doing their blood sugar readings. According to BusinessWeek, “Additional points are earned for staying within target blood-sugar ranges, which parents can program in. ‘There used to be days when I didn’t want to test,’ says George Dove, 12, of Nottingham, U.K., who must use the meter as many as eight times a day. ‘Now, it’s fun.’” The program is only offered in the UK right now, but Bayer plans to roll it out in the US this month.
I know a lady who could benefit from something similar but it would have to be associated more with shopping than video games. And how about something to encourage me to behave? Are you listening Bayer?