London Trial To Aggressively Treat Diabetes Expanding

London trial to aggressively treat diabetes expanding

Aggressive treatment for Londoners with Type 2 diabetes has proven so popular, Lawson Health Research Institute will open up enrolment in a study for a third time since 2015.
Doctors usually start treating diabetics with a single medication, and only add other drugs and insulin if the disease worsens. That wait-and-see approach has been turned on its head in a study in which doctors treat patients aggressively from the start with two diabetes medications plus insulin at bedtime for three months.
“The goal of the . . . study is to take a proactive approach to help people early in the disease, normalize their blood sugars for a period of 12 weeks and then slow the progression of the disease and the need for additional medications,” says Dr. Irene Hramiak, Lawson researcher, endocrinologist and chief of the Centre for Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism at St. Joseph’s Health Care London.
“We want to know if we can induce remission, for how long and whether it matters what combination of medications we use.”
Lawson is one of seven Canadian sites taking part in the REMIT study, led by the Population Health Research Institute, a joint institute of McMaster University and Hamilton Health Sciences. A preliminary study produced remission in up to 40 per cent of patients for at least three months.
With a family history of Type 2 diabetes, Greg Ackland was diagnosed more than six years ago when he underwent an operation for a hernia. He developed a mild infection and, while being treated, his care team discovered his blood sugar levels were high.
Ackland started treatmen Continue reading

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Parents 'unaware of type 1 diabetes symptoms'

About 90% of parents are unaware of the four key symptoms of type 1 diabetes in children, a survey suggests.
The poll of 1,170 parents, for Diabetes UK, suggests many cases go undetected until the child becomes seriously ill.
In the BBC News website Scrubbing Up column, its chief executive says about 2,000 under-18s are diagnosed with the condition in the UK each year.
The main signs are tiredness, needing the toilet more, excessive thirst and weight loss.
An estimated 3.7 million people in the UK have diabetes.
Type 1 affects about 10% of them. It appears before the age of 40, usually in childhood. It is treated by daily insulin doses - taken either by injections or via an insulin pump - a healthy diet and regular physical activity
Type 2 develops when the body can still make some insulin, but not enough, or when the insulin that is produced does not work properly.
'Obvious'
Most of the parents surveyed knew thirstiness and tiredness were warning signs. But only 38% knew passing urine frequently was an indication of type 1 diabetes, while even fewer - 28% - linked weight loss with the condition.
The charity says this is one reason why a quarter of children with type 1 diabetes are only diagnosed once they are already seriously ill with diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA), a life threatening condition that needs immediate specialist treatment in hospital.
DKA happens when the body is unable to break down glucose because there is too little insulin, and it begins to break down fat instead.
This causes a by-product called ketones to build up. DKA can lead to children falling into a c Continue reading

Health-e News: Diabetes moves up the Killer Charts

Women are the most vulnerable to diseases that thrive when a person is too fat. But “fat shaming” individuals won’t help when junk food is cheaper than healthy food and health education is virtually non-existent. HEALTH-E’s Kerry Cullinan reports.
The new killer in town preys on older, overweight women from poor communities. It has been moving stealthily through the population, its influence under-estimated as our attention has been focused on HIV and tuberculosis.
But suddenly diabetes has emerged as the biggest killer of South African women and the second biggest killer overall, according to 2015 death statistics released recently by Statistics South Africa.
Seven years before this, diabetes was not even in the Top 10 killers. But now it is second only to TB.
Clinics are being overwhelmed by cases of diabetes and hypertension, both linked to bad diet and being too fat. By late last year, public health facilities were seeing more than 15,000 new cases of diabetes and close to 25,000 new hypertension cases every month, according to the health department’s District Health Information System (DHIS).
There are now over eight-million obese people in South Africa, far outnumbering the six-million South Africans living with HIV.
Many people on antiretroviral (ARV) medicine are also on medication for diabetes and hypertension, yet not enough research has been done on how all the medication interacts.
At one Cape Town clinic, three-quarters of the ARV patients were also on hypertension medicine, according to Professor Tolu Oni from the University of Cape Town.
KwaZulu-Nat Continue reading

The Unrelenting Global March Of Diabetes

Diabetes is the world's eighth biggest killer, accounting for some 1.5 million deaths each year. A major new World Health Organization report has now revealed that the number of cases around the world has nearly quadrupled to 422 million in 2014 from 108 million in 1980. The Eastern-Mediterranean region had the biggest increase in cases during that time frame. Diabetes now affects one in 11 adults with high blood sugar levels linked to 3.8 million deaths every year.
This chart shows the percentage prevalence and number of adults with diabetes by WHO region in 1980 and 2014.
Download Chart
URL to be used as reference link:https://www.statista.com/chart/4617/the-unrelenting-global-march-of-diabetes/
HTML code to embed chart You will find more statistics at Statista Continue reading

The global diabetes epidemic in charts

Nearly one in ten people globally will have some form of diabetes by 2035, the International Diabetes Federation predicts in a new report. There are some 382 million people living with the disease, but that could jump 55% by 2035, the IDF says. Here’s the full report (PDF) and Reuters’ report on same.
“The highest prevalence rates are to be found in the Western Pacific, where more than a third of adults in Tokelau, Micronesia and the Marshall Islands are already living with the disease,” Reuters adds.
Below, check out the IDF’s chart on the current number of diabetes sufferers by region, and where the rates are projected to increase. The number of Africans with diabetes is expected to double by 2035, the IDF says. The number of Chinese with the disease is skyrocketing as well, up to 114 million in 2010 from just 22 million in 2007. Nearly one out of every three people with diabetes globally is Chinese.
The US currently spends 1 in 5 healthcare dollars on diabetes — or 36% of the world total of diabetes spending on adults, the IDF says. Diabetes causes 5.1 million deaths globally in 2013; that’s a rate of one death every six seconds.
For more charts and interactive tables, check out the CDC’s website. Continue reading