Half Of Adults In The U.S. Have Diabetes Or Pre-Diabetes, Study Finds

A national wake up call to intensify efforts to control the obesity crisis with added focus on diet, exercise and monitoring blood sugar
According to a study published online in JAMA today, nearly 50% of adults living in the U.S. have diabetes or pre-diabetes, a condition where a person already has elevated blood sugar and is at risk to develop diabetes.
Diabetes, a condition where blood sugar is elevated, may reflect lack of production of insulin to lower blood sugar (Type 1) or insulin resistance (Type 2), generally the result of obesity, poor diet or lack of exercise leading to the metabolic syndrome.
Diabetes is a costly disease in the U.S, racking up an estimated 245 billion in 2012, related to consumption and utilization of health care resources as well as lost productivity, according to the researchers in the study. Diabetes can damage blood vessels, the eyes and kidneys, also resulting in poor wound healing and devastating soft tissue infections. And nearly 71,000 persons die annually due to complications associated with diabetes, based on recent statistics from the American Diabetes Association.
Investigators in the study defined undiagnosed diabetes as those persons having a fasting blood sugar greater than 126 mg/dl or a hemoglobin A1C > 6.5 %, a measure of long term glucose control. Pre-diabetes was defined as having a fasting blood sugar 100-125 mg/dl, or a hemoglobin A1C of 5.7-6.4%.
Researchers evaluated 5,000 patients who were part of a national survey designed to assess the prevalence of diabetes and explore trends in different subgroups and ethnicities.
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Type 2 diabetes IS reversible: Eating just 600 calories a day for 8 weeks can save the lives of millions of sufferers

Type 2 diabetes can be reversed by going on a low calorie diet, new research shows.
Consuming just 600 calories a day for eight weeks can save the lives of millions of sufferers of the preventable condition.
Newcastle University scientists said that excess calories lead to a fatty liver, which causes the liver to produce too much glucose.
The excess fat is then passed to the pancreas, which causes the insulin-producing cells to fail and thus causing diabetes.
Losing less than one gram of fat from the pancreas can re-start insulin production, reversing type 2 diabetes, the researchers found.
This reversal of diabetes remains possible for at least ten years after the onset of the condition, lead author Professor Roy Taylor said.
Such a diet helps bring about 15kg of weight loss on average. Weight loss has long been known to help reverse the condition.
It's down to the patients
Professor Taylor, who has spent almost four decades studying the condition, said: 'I think the real importance of this work is for the patients themselves.
'Many have described to me how embarking on the low calorie diet has been the only option to prevent what they thought - or had been told - was an inevitable decline into further medication and further ill health because of their diabetes.
'By studying the underlying mechanisms we have been able to demonstrate the simplicity of type 2 diabetes.'
What did the study find?
The study showed results within just a week of starting the diet. It caused a profound fall in insulin sensitivity.
Fasting blood sugar levels, of which diabetes patients have signifi Continue reading

New Diabetes Test Could Be More Accurate

For more than 400 million people with diabetes around the world, blood testing is a routine part of managing their disease.
Those tests, however, aren’t always accurate for a variety of reasons.
A team of researchers thinks there might be a better way.
The researchers say they have devised a new method for estimating blood sugar levels that can reduce errors by more than 50 percent.
The researchers published their findings today in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
In their study, they combined a mathematical model of hemoglobin glycation in red blood cells with large data sets of patient glucose measurements. It indicated that the age of red blood cells is a major indicator of A1C variation because hemoglobin accumulates more sugar over time.
When they controlled the age of cells and tested it on more than 200 people with diabetes, they say the error rate went from 1 in 3 to 1 in 10.
One of the researchers, Dr. John Higgins, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School, told Healthline these calculations can be used to correct the test results that people with diabetes now get at their regular checkups.
It can also provide an estimate of the A1C result for patients using continuous glucose monitors.
Essentially, it has the potential to be the new gold standard in diabetic testing, Higgins said.
Read more: Prediabetes: To screen or not to screen? »
What’s wrong with current tests
The current gold standard for diabetes screening is the glycohemoglobin test (HbA1c).
It is a general gauge of diabetes control that specifies an average blood glucose level over Continue reading

Alan Thicke Will Always be a Diabetes Dad

The “Growing Pains” star continues to fundraise for cure research on behalf of his grown son.
Alan Thicke is worried that he will arrive late to his venue, so he calls from the road for our telephone interview. Thicke, who stars with his family in the mock-reality television show Unusually Thicke, is racing to a venue in New Jersey to host a show called Dancing Pros Live.
“It’s like Dancing With the Stars, but without the stars,” Thicke quips.
Thicke makes time for the interview because diabetes is never far from his mind, even though his son, Brennan, is now fully grown and a medical marijuana entrepreneur in California. Thicke, who became known as the ultimate television dad in the 80’s sitcom Growing Pains, says that parents of children with Type 1 diabetes never stop worrying about their children, even if they no longer manage day-to-day blood sugar levels.
“I think he certainly knows I’m completely there for him,” he says. “I’ve put a lot of time and energy and money into promoting the cause and finding a cure for my eldest son.”
Thicke is a veteran of the diabetes research fundraising circuit, both for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and for the Alan Thicke Centre For Juvenile Diabetes Research at the University of Western Ontario. He often can be found promoting other causes, as well. He jokes that philanthropy can be a “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” world; if he speaks at the events of other causes, others will reciprocate and speak on behalf of diabetes research. Philanthropy helps Thicke feel like he’s doing som Continue reading

New treatment on the horizon for type 1 diabetes sufferers

Patients suffering from type 1 diabetes may soon have access to improved approaches to treat the disease, courtesy of new research out of Sydney's Westmead Institute for Medical Research.
The team of researchers, led by Professor Jenny Gunton, discovered that pancreatic islets transplants delivered into the quadriceps muscle work just as successfully as the current clinical practice of transplanting islets into a patient's liver via the portal vein.
Lead researcher Ms Rebecca Stokes said that transplants into the liver can present certain risks for the patient, so their research investigated safer and more beneficial treatment options for transplant recipients.
"Islets are cells in the pancreas that produce insulin," Ms Stokes explained.
"Pancreatic islet transplantation is used as a cure for type 1 diabetes as it allows the recipient to produce and regulate insulin after their own islet cells have been destroyed by the disease.
"Currently, islet transplants are infused into a patient's liver via the portal vein. This site is used for islet transplants due to its exposure to both nutrients and insulin in the body.
"However, islet infusion into the liver also presents certain risks for the patient, including potential complications from bleeding, blood clots and portal hypertension.
"This suggests that there may be better treatment options for patients receiving islet transplants.
"We investigated alternative transplantation sites for human and mouse islets in recipient mice, comparing the portal vein with quadriceps muscle and kidney, liver and spleen capsules.
"Colleagues Continue reading