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A Danish follow-up study published in Diabetologia, the journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD), may have inadvertently proven how stubborn the male species really is when it comes to its health.
This recent initiative follows a prior interventional study in which researchers compared the outcomes of two groups over a six-year period. The first group was "structured personal care" in 1,381 newly diagnosed Type 2 diabetics; the second, diabetics getting routine care, as determined by their general practitioners.
The doctors in the study group were encouraged to advocate for, and monitor the effects of, diet and lifestyle changes, as well as delaying distribution of prescription drugs until deemed necessary. Patients in the this group were also given individualized targets that were reviewed every four months. The study concluded that structured personal care appeared to be more effective in lowering glycated hemoglobin (A1C) a marker used to measure cumulative blood glucose levels over an extended time period but in women only.
Using national registries over the following 13-year period, 492 men and 478 women from the original study were assessed for all-cause mortality, incidence of diabetes-related death, any diabetes-related endpoint, myocardial infarction, stroke, peripheral vascular disease and microvascular disease.
At the end of this 13-year observational study in 2008, analysis revealed that women given structured personal care were 26 percent less likely to die of any cause, and 30 percent less likely to die of a diabetes-related cause, than women given routine care. Equally notable, these differences were not seen in the men receiving tailored personal care versus routine care.
The authors cite complex social and cultural issues of gender as the reason behind the differing outcomes of this study. In simpler terms, they concluded that men are stubborn patients.
While such a generalization may make light of this issue somewhat, it is not a laughing matter. Based on American Diabetes Association (ADA) statistics from 2010, diabetes is the seventh leading cause of death in this country. That year, the chronic disease was cited as a cause of death in over 234,000 cases. Even with such staggering figures, the ADA believes diabetes is still an underreported cause of death.
Commenting on their findings, the authors highlighted "a need to further explore the gender-specific effects of major intervention trials in order to rethink the way we provide medical care to both men and women, so that both sexes benefit from intensified treatment efforts."