A report in the September 24 issue of JAMA has some mildly encouraging news regarding the health of the American public.
In contrast to the doubling of the incidence and prevalence of diabetes during the years 1990 through 2008, new data indicates that this trend at least in many populations has stabilized.
type 2 diabetes
Past research has demonstrated that tight control of blood glucose levels can help people with type 1 diabetes the ones who must use insulin to avoid some of the negative health consequences of the disease. A new study, published recently in The Lancet, extends the benefits of tight control to patients with type 2 diabetes the more common type usually associated with obesity and overweight.
If not well-controlled, diabetes either type 1 or type 2 can result in a number of debilitating complications. Some or these are due to negative effects on small blood vessels or microvasculature throughout the body. Thus, problems with vessels in the eyes (retinopathy), kidneys (nephropathy) and nervous system (neuropathy), can result in blindness, kidney damage, and/or pain and numbness in the legs and feet, respectively.
Talk of a rapidly accelerating diabetes epidemic has settled into our medical and public health
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported on Wednesday major changes are being seen in what is still the
Bariatric surgery is effective at reducing the BMI of obese individuals and in many cases ameliorating the severity of type 2 diabetes over the course of 1 to 2 years. Many longer-term studies have been observational in nature, and cannot provide data on the causes of the benefit. In order for reliance to be placed on such results, longer-term, randomized studies are necessary.
According to the American Diabetes Association (ADA), gestational diabetes (GDM) is diagnosed in pregnant women who have not had diabetes, but who have high blood sugar during pregnancy.
If ever there was a need for an effective new drug, it would be something to treat obesity. Yet, following the Fen-Phen debacle in 1997, when Wyeth was forced to withdraw their highly effective appetite suppressant (also called Redux) due to heart valve toxicity and rare cases of often fatal primary pulmonary hypertension, drug companies and the FDA were scared off to the point that 13 years would pass before another appetite suppressant would be approved.
Academy Award winning actor Tom Hanks, who is known for taking on roles requiring him to lose or gain significant amounts of weight, revealed yesterday on
Last November we commented on a rather startling development in the treatment of type 2 diabetes. A widely-used family of drugs called sulfonylureas (Avandia and Glipizide, for 2 examples) was found to increase heart attacks, strokes and death by about 20 percent
According to a new report released by the New York City Health Department over the past ten years, the number of New Yorkers with type 2 diabetes has increased from eight percent to about 11 percent. This number is higher than the national average of 9.5 percent.