Home
You can view the current or previous issues of Diabetes Health online, in their entirety, anytime you want.
Click Here To View
See if you qualify for our free healthcare professional magazines. Click here to start your application for Pre-Diabetes Health, Diabetes Health Pharmacist and Diabetes Health Professional.
Latest Professional Issues Articles
Professional Diabetes Issues Article Archives
December 2012
Dr. Kenneth P. Moritsugu, MD, MPH, FACPM is a very interesting man. He served as the Acting Surgeon General of the United States in 2006 and was made Chairman of the Johnson & Johnson Diabetes Institute in October 2007. The Johnson & Johnson Diabetes Institute is designed to serve as a home for the diabetes family and a trusted place of diabetes learning that will inspire diabetes innovation, improved care, and better outcomes worldwide. Through the Institute, Johnson & Johnson is opening and operating state-of-the-art instructional facilities around the world to provide health professionals with education and training aimed at improving diabetes patients' outcomes by working at the community level.
1 comment - Posted Dec 15, 2012
October 2012
Lantus and Levemir have a lot in common. Both are basal insulin formulas, which means that they last for a long time in the body and act as background insulin, with a slow feed that mimics the constant low output of insulin produced by a healthy pancreas.
1 comment - Posted Oct 7, 2012
April 2011
Prodigy Diabetes Care is an aptly named company, a very young enterprise with the talents of a much older organization and a future that promises prodigious rewards. It was founded in 2006 by Ramzi Abulhaj and Rick Admani, two brothers from Palestine who are its sole owners. In the five years since then, they have built a company that is successfully competing against the diabetes old guard by focusing on engineering and a unique marketing strategy.
8 comments - Posted Apr 2, 2011
February 2011
As announced in November, 2010, the National Certification Board for Diabetes Educators (NCBDE), the American Association of Diabetes Educators (AADE) and the American Diabetes Association (ADA) have created the Diabetes Educator Mentorship Program to promote careers that will lead to a Certified Diabetes Educator® (CDE®) designation and improve access to much needed diabetes self-management education (DSME).
0 comments - Posted Feb 12, 2011
In a new book, "Overdiagnosed: Making People Sick in the Pursuit of Health," Dartmouth researchers and physicians H. Gilbert Welch, Lisa Schwartz and Steven Woloshin argue that the medical establishment's embrace of early diagnosis and treatment as the key to keeping people healthy actually does the opposite.
0 comments - Posted Feb 8, 2011
January 2011
Your young primary care doctor may not know a lot about diabetes, according to a study led by Stephen Sisson, MD, of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. "When I graduated from residency here, I knew much more about how to ventilate a patient on a machine than how to control somebody's blood sugar, and that's a problem," said Sisson in a press release. "The average resident doesn't know what the goal for normal fasting blood sugar should be. If you don't know what it has to be, how are you going to guide your diabetes management with patients?"
2 comments - Posted Jan 26, 2011
UCSF will launch one of the nation's first inter-professional, team-based simulation learning centers to prepare doctors, nurses, pharmacists and dentists together for the changing health care landscape.
0 comments - Posted Jan 17, 2011
November 2010
The newest threat to patient health may not be the flu or other epidemics. It could be a major shortage of prescription drugs. The shortage has reached the level of a "national public health crisis," according to a survey conducted by the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) this summer. Survey respondents said shortages in the past year were "the worst ever, without a glimmer of hope for any improvement in the near future."
0 comments - Posted Nov 27, 2010
New technology is popping up all over in the medical community, from new diagnostic machines, to new ways of administering drugs, to an almost endless supply of self-monitoring devices such as blood glucose meters. But a technology often overlooked is one that could have the most impact-electronic medical records.
0 comments - Posted Nov 3, 2010
October 2010
Patients who cannot discuss their diabetes with a doctor in their own language may have poorer health outcomes, even when interpreter services are available, according to a new study by researchers at UCSF and the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research.
0 comments - Posted Oct 23, 2010
September 2010
I’m back. I started working with Diabetes Health 10 years ago. At that time, Diabetes Health was the one publication open enough to talk about a subject that was controversial at that time… Lower Carb Options. That was my column, and I got a lot of slack from it. I didn’t understand why. People with diabetes want and need lower carb options. What was the problem with giving people options? That’s what Diabetes Health is all about – teaching people there are healthy options. Now it’s common to see lower carb options for people who have diabetes.
0 comments - Posted Sep 29, 2010
August 2010
Cleveland Clinic has finalized the agenda for the 8th Annual Medical Innovation Summit, which will be held Nov. 1-3 on the Clinic's campus. The Summit draws 1,000 attendees each year, and includes panel discussions with some of the industry's top CEOs and thought leaders.
0 comments - Posted Aug 18, 2010
A week of Spanish study (5 days of classes) concentrated on your professional specialty. You will have 30 contact classroom hours, as well as opportunities outside the classroom for use of your Spanish. This course may qualify for continuing education units. Information on this is being developed. The course is arranged through Language Link, the U.S. Office for the Spanish Language Institute (800.552.2051, kay@langlink.com), and is sponsored by the AADE California coordinating body.
0 comments - Posted Aug 9, 2010
July 2010
Looking for novel ways to help improve patient outcomes, the Johnson & Johnson Diabetes Institute is using innovative adult education techniques to train diabetes educators around the world. While the cultural and epidemiological differences in each region can be challenging, David L. Horwitz, M.D., Ph.D., FACP, Chief Medical Officer of the Johnson & Johnson Diabetes Institute, feels confident this program can make a positive impact to help improve patient outcomes.
0 comments - Posted Jul 17, 2010
May 2010
The United States Department of Health and Human Services released The National Action Plan to Improve Health Literacy aimed at making health information and services easier to understand and use. The plan calls for improving the jargon-filled language, dense writing, and complex explanations that often fill patient handouts, medical forms, health web sites, and recommendations to the public.
0 comments - Posted May 30, 2010
Early management of type 2 diabetes with an integrated team of specialists, including a dietitian, diabetes educator, endocrinologist, cardiologist, and nephrologist, can significantly reduce the incidence of complications and lower healthcare costs, according to an online survey of more than 300 endocrinologists and family practice physicians. The survey was supported by Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc., with the goal of determining the most common obstacles for physicians in treating type 2 diabetes patients and preventing complications. Sermo, the largest physician only online community, conducted the survey. A significant number of these physicians (44 percent) reveal that 50 percent of their patients develop at least one of the following serious complications: cardiovascular disease, nerve pain, kidney disease, stroke, blindness, or limb amputation.
2 comments - Posted May 8, 2010
January 2010
DEERFIELD, Ill. January 13, 2010 - Walgreens (NYSE: WAG)(NASDAQ: WAG) today announced the launch of the Walgreens Optimal WellnessTM program, an innovative self-care educational program for people with chronic conditions that will initially focus on people with type 2 diabetes. Walgreens Optimal WellnessTM is a significant step for Walgreens and the health care industry that capitalizes on the power of face-to-face interaction.
1 comment - Posted Jan 14, 2010
November 2009
"Spanish for Diabetes Educators" is a January, 2010 course arranged through Language Link, the U.S. Office for the Spanish Language Institute and the Multi-Cities chapter of the AADE (McAADE) in California.The course consists of a week of Spanish study (five days of classes) concentrated on your professional specialty. You will have 30 contact classroom hours, as well as opportunities outside the classroom for professional use of your Spanish. This course will qualify for continuing education units.
2 comments - Posted Nov 13, 2009
October 2009
Dr. Kenneth P. Moritsugu, MD, MPH, FACPM is a very interesting man. He served as the Acting Surgeon General of the United States in 2006 and was made Chairman of the Johnson & Johnson Diabetes Institute in October 2007. The Johnson & Johnson Diabetes Institute is designed to serve as a home for the diabetes family and a trusted place of diabetes learning that will inspire diabetes innovation, improved care, and better outcomes worldwide. Through the Institute, Johnson & Johnson is opening and operating state-of-the-art instructional facilities around the world to provide health professionals with education and training aimed at improving diabetes patients' outcomes by working at the community level.
0 comments - Posted Oct 1, 2009
In August, I had the pleasure of traveling to Atlanta, Georgia to attend the American Association of Diabetes Educators (AADE) annual meeting. I sat in on several seminars, the most interesting of which are summarized here.
0 comments - Posted Oct 1, 2009
August 2009
Because we have good health insurance, my son sees his endocrinologist twice a year, his diabetes health educator twice a year, and his nutritionist once a year. Meanwhile, he sees his school nurse one to three times a day. As you know, this relationship can make a difference for the rest of a child's life.
0 comments - Posted Aug 1, 2009
July 2009
May 5 - Ann Arbor, MI - In the first study of the effects of statins on the concentrations of both low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C; known as the "bad" cholesterol) and low-density lipoprotein particles (LDL-P) in patients with metabolic syndrome, it was shown that even though the statins lowered the concentrations of LDL-C to target levels, the patients retained considerable residual risk for cardiovascular events because LDL-P concentrations were not reduced to a similar extent. A pre-print version of the study in Diabetes Care is available online at http://dx.doi.org/10.2337/dc08-1681, and the final version will be available in print in the June 2009 issue, as well as online at the same URL.
0 comments - Posted Jul 29, 2009
High percentages of endocrinologists, primary care physicians, and managed care organizations surveyed by a research firm say they would like to see additional GLP-1 analogues like Amylin/Eli Lilly's Byetta® and DPP-IV inhibitors like Merck's Januvia® available to treat type 2 diabetes.
6 comments - Posted Jul 25, 2009
Minneapolis-based Medtronic Inc. is recalling some lots of its Quick-set infusion sets over concerns that they may cause insulin pumps to deliver too much or too little insulin.
1 comment - Posted Jul 21, 2009
Of all the quests that researchers have undertaken in search of a cure or decisive treatment for type 1 diabetes, the search for a vaccine has to be the boldest. But how would you develop such a vaccine, and how would it work?
2 comments - Posted Jul 9, 2009
Roche Diabetes Care Announces Unique Coaching Program for Diabetes Educators as Part of Long-Term Commitment to Fight the Disease
1 comment - Posted Jul 8, 2009
June 2009
With Type 2 diabetes emerging as an epidemic, primary care clinicians need to become savvy at initiating and adjusting insulin. Given the nationwide shortage of endocrinologists, referring all patients on insulin for endocrine appointments is not realistic in most areas of the country.
0 comments - Posted Jun 24, 2009
The World Health Organization (WHO) is still deciding whether to declare a global pandemic
0 comments - Posted Jun 10, 2009
The polls are open for voting for new members of the AADE board, AADE officers, and the nominating committee. The good news is that you can vote for three people! Diabetes Health wishes Board of Directors candidates and former DH Guest Editors, Jane Jeffrie Seley, Kim Higgins, and Deborah Greenwood, the best of luck.
0 comments - Posted Jun 1, 2009
May 2009
Diabetes educators and their supporters nationwide are being asked to rally behind congressional legislation that would establish a "national diabetes report card," promote better training of doctors with regard to reporting diabetes as a factor in births and deaths, and set federal standards requiring doctors to achieve a level of diabetes education before they can be licensed or certified.
7 comments - Posted May 8, 2009
Dental researchers are reporting that resolvins, products derived from omega-3 fatty acids, may have the ability to restore the soft tissue and even bone lost in periodontal (gum) disease.
0 comments - Posted May 7, 2009
Voglibose*, a generic drug often used in combination with sulfonylureas to control blood glucose levels, appears to delay or even prevent the onset of diabetes in people who are predisposed to the disease.
6 comments - Posted May 1, 2009
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) has issued a call for proposals through its national program, Project HealthDesign: Rethinking the Power and Potential of Personal Health Records. Grant recipients will work to assess and test the potential of "observations of daily living" (ODLs) to help patients and physicians better manage chronic illnesses.
0 comments - Posted May 1, 2009
April 2009
When Smiths Medical announced in late March that it was discontinuing the manufacture and sales of its Deltec Cozmo insulin pumps, the company's annual sales of that product were about $36 million. In contrast, Medtronic, manufacturer of the Minimed line of insulin pumps reported sales of $727 million in the nine months from April 2008 to January 2009.
8 comments - Posted Apr 29, 2009
Diabetes Health has joined the social networking sphere. Join us as a fan on Facebook, talk to us on Twitter, and subscribe to our RSS feed. Publisher and Editor-in-Chief, Nadia Al-Samarrie wants to hear your thoughts and she'll be reading what you have to say with great interest.
1 comment - Posted Apr 28, 2009
Results from DURATION-2, a 26-week test comparing the diabetic drugs Januvia, Actos, and experimental long-acting Byetta (Byetta LAR) show that Byetta produced lower A1c's and more weight loss than the other two drugs.
5 comments - Posted Apr 15, 2009
Buoyed by its recent successful phase 1 human clinical trial of a patch that delivers basal insulin through the skin, Atlanta-based Altea Therapeutics says it will work with Eli Lilly and Company and Amylin Pharmaceuticals, Inc., to develop a daily transdermal patch that deliver sustained levels of Byetta (exenatide). The patch, in a 12- and a 24-hour form, will use the company's proprietary PassPort Transdermal Delivery System. Lilly and Amylin will fund all development, manufacturing, and marketing activities for the product.
2 comments - Posted Apr 7, 2009
A new research report by the Pacific Research Institute (PRI) reviews three decades of the Food and Drug Administration's performance and concludes that the agency is over-funded, over-staffed, and denies hundreds of thousands of Americans timely access to new medicines. Leviathan's Drug Problem: The Federal Monopoly of Pharmaceutical Regulation and Its Deadly Cost was authored by John R. Graham, Director of Health Care Studies at PRI.
5 comments - Posted Apr 7, 2009
Last week we published an article about how the CDC says too many people are still smoking. The federal government has a Healthy People 2010 goal of reducing adult smoking rates to 12 percent or less by 2010. Of the 50 states, only Utah has thus far achieved that goal.
1 comment - Posted Apr 2, 2009
Canadian scientists studying the effects of glucose on cellular aging have discovered an unusual effect that could change how doctors treat diabetes and even address the human lifespan.
2 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2009
March 2009
The American Diabetes Association (ADA) and American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists (AACE) released a statement last week in response to the study published online in the New England Journal of Medicine which suggested that intensive blood glucose control for critical care patients with hyperglycemia doesn't improve outcomes and is associated with an increase in deaths.
1 comment - Posted Mar 31, 2009
One of the most impressive feats of endurance in the animal world is performed by the sled dogs that run up to 100 miles per day in such races as Alaska's Iditarod, a grueling 1,161-mile trek from Simpson to Homer.
0 comments - Posted Mar 31, 2009
AR9281, a drug developed by the University of California at Davis and now under further development by a California-based pharmaceutical company, has entered Phase II of human clinical trials.
1 comment - Posted Mar 27, 2009
New guidelines from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force state that daily low doses of aspirin-75 milligrams to 81 milligrams-are as effective as higher doses (100+ milligrams) in preventing heart attacks among men and strokes among women.
3 comments - Posted Mar 26, 2009
Differences in the way tobacco is marketed and promoted and differences in tobacco control programs are some of the reasons why more than twice as many adults smoke in some states as in others, according to a recent Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
0 comments - Posted Mar 24, 2009
Physicians who treat people with type 2 diabetes face difficult choices when selecting the best medical therapy for each patient. The decision process is further complicated by the fact that because type 2 diabetes is a progressive disease, therapeutic agents that were initially successful may fail five or ten years later.
166 comments - Posted Mar 20, 2009
Sanofi-aventis U.S., a maker of insulin as well as many other pharmaceuticals, announced last month the launch of their new YouTube diabetes channel that's designed to challenge the barriers, myths, and misperceptions about insulin use and empower people living with type 2 diabetes to make better-informed decisions for managing their condition. The channel is part of their broader GoInsulin campaign, a multi-media resource for people living with type 2 diabetes to help dispel the myths about insulin.
0 comments - Posted Mar 19, 2009
A report commissioned by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is being published in this month's issue of the American Journal of Kidney Diseases, the National Kidney Foundation's journal. Led by kidney specialists Dr. Andrew S. Levey at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts, and Dr. William McClellan at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, the panel of experts designed a comprehensive public health strategy to prevent the development and complications of chronic kidney disease in the U.S.
1 comment - Posted Mar 19, 2009
"Medical miracles do not happen simply by accident," said President Obama, as he signed an executive order lifting the ban on federally funded embryonic stem cell research. The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) is celebrating President Obama's new policy. They recently released this statement by Mary Tyler Moore, the International Chairman of the JDRF:
12 comments - Posted Mar 17, 2009
Researchers funded by the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation have found two chemical compounds that can trigger the growth of insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas. The discovery could become the basis for medicines designed to regenerate the pancreas in people with type 1 diabetes.
9 comments - Posted Mar 11, 2009
If you live in California and have been denied insurance coverage because you have diabetes, you'll probably have to wait to enroll in the state-run program that's supposed to offer you health benefits. But California Republican Senator Sam Aanestad of Grass Valley hopes to change that with legislation he introduced January 20th. Aanestad says his bill, Senate Bill 57, would alter that program in ways that will allow more people access to coverage.
1 comment - Posted Mar 10, 2009
February 2009
We recently published an article about how you can avoid losing money in insurance claims. The article gave helpful hints on how to deal with your insurance company including an sample appeals letter. We promised to publish in the near future a sample CGM appeals letter. Here they are!
0 comments - Posted Feb 27, 2009
Too little production of a molecule called LSR (lipolysis-stimulated lipoprotein receptor) in the liver sends blood fat soaring to pathological levels in mice with type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome, say scientists at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg.
1 comment - Posted Feb 26, 2009
Avanafil, a pill that may permit diabetic men who are experiencing erectile dysfunction to engage in intercourse without the restrictions on food or alcoholic intake associated with other ED treatments, is entering a second phase 3 study-the crucial step before a drug manufacturer seeks FDA or European approval to market.
5 comments - Posted Feb 24, 2009
I admit it: I've had diabetes for seven years, and only recently did I even think about buying a medical alert ID. It's not like me to be this irresponsible, but diabetes crept up on me, rather like type 2 does, although I'm a type 1. My diabetes is a slowly progressing adult-onset form, sometimes called type 1.5. For the first five years after my diagnosis, I controlled the disease with diet.
12 comments - Posted Feb 24, 2009
Somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) has been considered a promising way to generate human stem cells for therapeutic applications for more than a decade. The shortage of human donor eggs has led to efforts to substitute animal oocytes. However, a new study published online in Cloning and Stem Cells, a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., demonstrates that animal oocytes lack the capacity to fully reprogram adult human cells. (The paper is available free online at www.liebertpub.com/clo.)
2 comments - Posted Feb 20, 2009
Dear Editor,
You are right when you wrote that CDE's were becoming an endangered species, but were you aware that the National Certification Board for Diabetes Educators (NCBDE) is part of the problem?
11 comments - Posted Feb 19, 2009
Data from a phase 3 study of the Novo Nordisk drug liraglutide shows that when it is used in combination with glimepiride, it is more effective at reducing A1c's than glimepiride by itself or glimepiride in combination with the drug rosiglitazone.
0 comments - Posted Feb 19, 2009
In what is believed to be a first-ever procedure, surgeons at Johns Hopkins have successfully removed a healthy donor kidney through a small incision in the back of the donor's vagina.
0 comments - Posted Feb 17, 2009
Can you imagine a hospital where the floors are carpeted, so you feel soothed and protected? Where the doors open silently so as not to jar your nerves? Where vending machines are filled with fresh fruits, and the healthier the meal in the cafeteria, the less it costs? How about elevator doors covered in exotic floral motifs, or a diabetes center where you never wait more than ten minutes to be seen?
8 comments - Posted Feb 17, 2009
Bone marrow cells that the body normally uses to restore blood vessels can be cultured to stop neuropathy and restore nerve function in diabetic mice, according to researchers at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.
12 comments - Posted Feb 12, 2009
Responding to a slowdown in fundraising and cuts in federal funding of diabetes research, the Alexandra, Virginia-based American Diabetes Association has eliminated 86 staff positions, about 10 percent of its workforce.
1 comment - Posted Feb 11, 2009
Keep this letter-number sequence in mind: CXCL10. You'll probably be reading a lot more about it.
1 comment - Posted Feb 11, 2009
Baxter International, Inc., which produces the peritoneal dialysis solution Extraneal (icodextrin), has teamed with MedicAlert Foundation International to encourage peritoneal dialysis patients to add a warning to their MedicAlert bracelets regarding the fact that icodextrin may cause false readings on non-specific glucose monitors.
0 comments - Posted Feb 5, 2009
By introducing a protein called cdk6 into human insulin-producing adult beta cells via a virus, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine researchers have induced the cells to replicate "robustly." Previously, scientists believed that beta cells could be induced to regenerate slowly at best, and usually not at all.
0 comments - Posted Feb 5, 2009
Concerned about the growing number of Americans who are developing diabetes, Sanofi-aventis U.S. has launched the "Diabetes National Alliance" to provide healthcare professionals with information on the standard of care for people living with the disease.
1 comment - Posted Feb 4, 2009
Back in 1993, I published an article titled "Is Noncompliance a Dirty Word?" in which I expressed sadness that people with diabetes were being blamed by their healthcare providers for not following treatment advice (1). I suggested that the patient's "failure" might really be a failure of the partnership (or lack thereof) between patient and provider. Fifteen long years ago, I challenged diabetes educators to work with medical practitioners to change noncompliance from a dirty word to a rare occurrence. So, how are we doing today?
20 comments - Posted Feb 3, 2009
January 2009
A study published in the Journal of Hospital Medicine has found that the glucose control practices at academic medical centers are below par and fail to meet the current standards set by the American Diabetes Association (ADA).
2 comments - Posted Jan 30, 2009
Finalists have been announced for the 2008 Diabetes Educator of the Year contest, sponsored by American Diabetes Wholesale (ADW). A panel of judges went through hundreds of nominations before narrowing the field down to five excellent finalists. You can read about each one and cast your vote through March 20th, 2009, by visiting the ADW website.
0 comments - Posted Jan 30, 2009
Researchers in India have found that 65 proteins in the saliva of people with type 2 diabetes have patterns unlike the patterns of the same proteins in the saliva of individuals without diabetes. Not only may the differences be a potential way to identify type 2s, but the proteins themselves are associated with immune response and metabolic regulation-two bodily functions that run afoul in type 2 diabetes.
0 comments - Posted Jan 29, 2009
Air polluted with particulate matter at concentrations found in many U.S. metro areas may be a contributing factor in obesity and to the onset of diabetes, say researchers at the Ohio State University Medical Center.
0 comments - Posted Jan 29, 2009
Syracuse University chemist Robert Doyle has taken out a patent on something that has long been a Holy Grail for insulin suppliers and users: a reliable way to take insulin orally instead of with a needle.
4 comments - Posted Jan 28, 2009
We first reported on salsalate, an aspirin-like drug discovered in the nineteenth century, last October. At that time, researchers at the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston discovered that it appears to reduce inflammation and lower blood glucose in people with type 2 diabetes.
2 comments - Posted Jan 27, 2009
Nearly every time that I mention islet transplantation in a conversation about diabetes, the person I'm with responds with a sniff that it's never going to work because of the immune suppression problem.
12 comments - Posted Jan 23, 2009
For patients who suffer frequent sharp abdominal pain from chronic pancreatitis, antioxidants may offer effective pain relief, according to a study recently published in Gastroenterology, the journal of the American Gastroenterological Association Institute.
5 comments - Posted Jan 23, 2009
Eli Lilly and Company, Indianapolis, agreed to pay $1.4 billion and plead guilty to promoting its antipsychotic medication Zyprexa as a treatment for dementia when it was not approved for that use by the FDA, according to the Justice Department.
1 comment - Posted Jan 22, 2009
Hearts in the medical community beat with considerable excitement at the discovery of leptin in 1994. A hormone produced by fat, leptin has a very useful talent: it tells the brain when to stop eating. So hopes were high that leptin would become the basis of an anti-obesity treatment. What could be simpler than to dose an obese person with a hormone that says, "You're not hungry any more, and you want to stop eating."
0 comments - Posted Jan 22, 2009
Scientists at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, have developed a synthetic version of high-density lipoprotein (HDL), the "good" cholesterol that doctors are always nudging their patients with diabetes to monitor.
0 comments - Posted Jan 20, 2009
In a speech on January 8, 2009, President-Elect Barack Obama pledged to make all medical records electronic within five years.
33 comments - Posted Jan 20, 2009
You've been diagnosed with diabetes because there is too much glucose (a kind of sugar) in your blood.
7 comments - Posted Jan 16, 2009
One of 2008's most interesting developments was the change in one long-standing recommendation for treating diabetes in people who have had the disease for a long time: Work intensely on getting blood sugar levels as low as possible.
11 comments - Posted Jan 15, 2009
As the 76-million-member Baby Boomer generation ages-its oldest members are now 63-nursing homes are bracing for an unprecedented demand for their services. Along with increased pressure from the sheer number of patients, nursing homes will also have to deal with the skyrocketing number of seniors with type 2 diabetes.
2 comments - Posted Jan 15, 2009
Now you can read Diabetes Health in over 30 languages! Look for the Google Translate button in the left-hand navigational column on any of our pages. You can translate the text on the page by clicking the language of your choice in the drop-down menu.
3 comments - Posted Jan 13, 2009
December 2008
Every year the American Diabetes Associations revises and updates its Clinical Practice Recommendations, a publication upon which many doctors and medical caregivers depend as a primary source of diabetes treatment information.
12 comments - Posted Dec 29, 2008
Diabetes may be described as a disease of glucose intolerance: high blood glucose is both the characteristic indicator and the cause of complications.
121 comments - Posted Dec 25, 2008
Sandy was giving her son his evening dose of NPH insulin - something she had done many times. But as she finished pushing in the plunger, she said to herself, "That shot took too long." She immediately realized that she had given Joey the wrong dose. In other words, by mistake, she had given him a potentially lethal dose of insulin.
61 comments - Posted Dec 25, 2008
Obesity in the United States is increasing in epidemic proportions. This is true in children as well as adults. It's estimated that the healthcare costs associated with obesity and its related complications will exceed $130 billion this year.
52 comments - Posted Dec 25, 2008
Take this test on insulin and see if you can get a higher score than hospital doctors and nurses.
19 comments - Posted Dec 17, 2008
Most people with diabetes will tell you this: Everything about having it is a hassle, an annoyance and sometimes utterly overwhelming. Endless worrying over meal plans, carbohydrate counting, finger-stick checks, pills, injections, lab tests, prescriptions, supplies and doctors’ appointments are nobody’s idea of fun.
7 comments - Posted Dec 17, 2008
I am always impressed when people find the strength to turn their own painful experience into a way to help others. In case you are losing faith that people are out there raising money, trying to find the Cure, and taking care of each other...read on.
1 comment - Posted Dec 8, 2008
November 2008
Diabetes care creates its own culture. There is a passion that surrounds the caretakers of the diabetes community. It is the small successes that spark us to keep on until the next one. Diabetes care creates champions out of all of us. I'd like to mention just a few of the hundreds of diabetes educators I have met.
9 comments - Posted Nov 10, 2008
September 2008
This fall, the American Diabetes Association (ADA) is inviting people across the country to "Step Out: Walk to Fight Diabetes" by participating in their one-day fund-raising walk, being held in more than 200 cities nationwide. The routes, which range from two to six miles, will be accessible to people of all ages and levels of mobility. All along the walk, participants will be supported by volunteers offering water, snacks, entertainment, and enthusiastic encouragement. The event draws a large contingency of individuals and teams composed of families, friends, and corporation employees, all walking and raising money in support of the ADA.
0 comments - Posted Sep 29, 2008
In its ongoing Health and Nutrition Strategist™ syndicated study, Decision Analyst recently asked 9,265 respondents about various health and lifestyle issues. Among respondents 20 and older, 9.6 percent said they had diabetes. Among all ages, about 23.6 million Americans have diabetes, according to the National Diabetes Information Clearinghouse.
4 comments - Posted Sep 18, 2008
The OneTouch® UltraMini® Meter by LifeScan, Inc., is now available in Purple Twilight and Blue Comet.
3 comments - Posted Sep 18, 2008
American Diabetes Wholesale, a discount provider of diabetic supplies to individuals without insurance, announced its second annual "Diabetes Educator of the Year Award" contest at the 2008 American Association of Diabetes Educators International Conference in Washington, D.C. American Diabetes Wholesale created the award to recognize the unsung heroes of the diabetes epidemic and to honor the dedicated healthcare professionals who are committed to helping those living with diabetes.
2 comments - Posted Sep 11, 2008
August 2008
The members of the AADE are an impassioned group who genuinely want to make a difference in their patients' lives. It was an ideal place for me to be, especially because I had a concern of my own: Why am I getting red dots every time I inject? Every educator I asked went right to work examining the problem and investigating my behavior, truly wanting to help. Unfortunately, they are dwindling in number each year, while patients are increasing in number, making their work ever more demanding.
4 comments - Posted Aug 20, 2008
My eye was caught recently by a cool company called FiveHumansTM. I was drawn in by their name and logo and then happily found that their product didn't disappoint. The company's website, FiveHumans.com, explains that Dan Grunvald and Lee Fine first dreamed up the concept of producing T-shirts with slogans and information related to a variety of diseases, which they called Disease Tees, in 2001. Their goal was to raise awareness and provide a tangible opportunity for people to support a cause near and dear to them.
3 comments - Posted Aug 20, 2008
July 2008
The non-profit Institute for Safe Medication Practices says there has been an increase in reports about mix-ups between prescriptions of insulin U-100 and insulin U-500 (U-500 is a concentrated insulin that is five times stronger than U-100).
0 comments - Posted Jul 3, 2008
June 2008
In the 17 years I have known Robert Oringer, I can honestly say that he has a soaring entrepreneurial spirit and a fierce independence – he is a man who is hard to harness. His mind is always ticking, excited by the next innovative idea.
2 comments - Posted Jun 2, 2008
May 2008
Dear Editor, I am a medical student in the M.D. program at Oregon Health and Sciences University and a type 1 diabetic of almost 10 years. I use a Medtronic pump and I also use their continuous glucose monitoring system (Paradigm Real-Time).
34 comments - Posted May 22, 2008
A word of caution about the values used below. This study was conducted using people without diabetes. Some people with diabetes experience symptoms at higher glucose levels than the study suggests. Other people with diabetes appear to function well with blood sugars in the 30's and 40's (mg/dl). Therefore, the values in the study should only be used as an approximation. This study also used plasma glucose levels. Your values done at home might be 20 percent lower or higher than these lab values. For example, epinephrine release in someone without diabetes would begin at about 63mg/dl with a home blood glucose meter.
43 comments - Posted May 1, 2008
April 2008
We’d like to invite diabetes professionals, persons with diabetes (and the people who love and help them) to contribute articles to Diabetes Health.
0 comments - Posted Apr 21, 2008
March 2008
“You need dialysis” are words nobody wants to hear. But today kidney failure doesn’t have to mean driving to and from a clinic three times a week and having a lesser quality of life. Hemodialysis (HD) can safely be done in the privacy of your home in two new ways: daily and nocturnal home HD, both of which can help you feel better and live longer.
6 comments - Posted Mar 19, 2008
Scientists at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston have initiated a phase 1 clinical trial to reverse type 1 diabetes. The trial is exploring whether the promising results from the laboratory of Denise Faustman, MD, PhD, can be applied in human diabetes.
13 comments - Posted Mar 19, 2008
Lawrence Lavery, DPM, podiatrist at Scott & White Memorial Hospital in Temple, Texas, clearly understands the diabetic foot.
3 comments - Posted Mar 19, 2008
This Week’s Diabetes Health Factoids
Number of U.S. Adults Diagnosed With Diabetes: 15.1 million
1 comment - Posted Mar 18, 2008
A Diabetes Health advisory board member offers advice on how to treat your feet well and avoid wounds and infections that could lead to amputation.
2 comments - Posted Mar 7, 2008
Previous observational studies have reported that heavy alcohol intake is a risk factor for hypertension. But such studies may be confounded by factors such as diet, smoking, exercise levels and socio-economic position. Clinical trials exploring the link are difficult to implement and have limited follow-up time.
0 comments - Posted Mar 5, 2008
Texas researchers says that an infrared light therapy that seemed to hold great promise in treating diabetic neuropathy works no better than “sham” (placebo) therapy.
9 comments - Posted Mar 5, 2008
February 2008
Eli Lilly and Company has introduced KwikPen, a pre-filled insulin pen containing its Humalog insulin brand of insulins. The pen is the third that Lilly has introduced over the past 12 months, following in the wake of the HumaPen MEMOIR, a digital insulin pen with memory, and the HumaPen® LUXURA HD, a reusable pen for people who need insulin dosing in smaller increments.
9 comments - Posted Feb 28, 2008
A British study of 800 people 65 and older concludes that people with diabetes are more likely than non-diabetics to experience difficulties walking, dressing and climbing stairs.
1 comment - Posted Feb 26, 2008
Just after a massive U.S. study dropped its aggressive treatment of blood glucose levels because of increased deaths among type 2 patients, international researchers announced that their similar intense study of tight blood sugar control showed no increased risk of death.
0 comments - Posted Feb 22, 2008
In its first edition, the new bimonthly journal Foot & Ankle Specialist (FAS) offers a three-step treatment plan for patients with diabetic foot infections. Diabetic patients suffering from severe infections face a 25 percent risk of amputation.
0 comments - Posted Feb 20, 2008
A Wayne State University Health Clinic study has shown that a single pill containing both a blood pressure-lowering drug and a cholesterol-lowering drug may be of particular benefit for African Americans.
0 comments - Posted Feb 20, 2008
A Texas endocrinologist who recently put the recently FDA-approved Medtronic iPro continuous glucose recorder through its paces with diabetic patients calls the tool a major step forward in doctors' ability to accurately monitor the disease.
10 comments - Posted Feb 18, 2008
According to British researchers at Barts and the London School of Medicine, drinking 500 ml (about one pint) of beetroot juice every day can significantly reduce blood pressure. It's the nitrate contained in the juice that produces the effect.
3 comments - Posted Feb 17, 2008
That ancient Greek advice, "moderation in all things," may apply not only to human conduct, but also to the natural world.
12 comments - Posted Feb 16, 2008
The Food and Drug Administration has approved the newest continuous glucose monitoring system from diabetes management device manufacturer Medtronic.
0 comments - Posted Feb 15, 2008
City of Hope researchers were among the more than 50 international investigators reporting advances against type 1 diabetes at the recent Rachmiel Levine Diabetes and Obesity Symposium in Newport Beach, Calif.
4 comments - Posted Feb 9, 2008
After seeing an increase in deaths among type 2 participants, the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) has halted the intense blood sugar control portion of its years-long study on controlling cardiovascular risks to people with diabetes.
14 comments - Posted Feb 8, 2008
A Canadian study asserts that girls and young women with big breasts run a 68-percent greater chance of acquiring diabetes by middle age than their smaller-breasted peers.
4 comments - Posted Feb 4, 2008
SK: We’re joined on our show by Craig Eberhard, vice president of sales at Amylin Pharmaceuticals. Hey, Craig, thanks for coming on the show. Amylin has one of the most innovative products that I’ve heard of in years. It’s called Byetta.
8 comments - Posted Feb 1, 2008
January 2008
I just had a frightening experience. A severe hypoglycemic, I took my regular 5 units of R Humulin 30 minutes before lunch. Instead of my normal sandwich and milk at lunch, I drank a glass of Slim Fast with milk. I carefully read the label and figured out that it was almost identical to the sandwich in calories, carbs and sugars.
11 comments - Posted Jan 30, 2008
A survey of people's experience with healthcare in seven countries - Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States - shows that we Americans don't stack up very well.
9 comments - Posted Jan 28, 2008
A new world-first study by Monash University researchers has found gastric banding surgery has a profound impact on one of society's biggest health issues - diabetes.
1 comment - Posted Jan 23, 2008
Swedish scientists have found that alcohol lowers blood sugar by redirecting blood within the pancreas and sending massive amounts of it to the islets.
16 comments - Posted Jan 23, 2008
German doctors solved two mysterious cases of rapid - and dangerous - weight loss from diarrhea once they determined that the cause was chewing too much sugar-free gum containing the artificial sweetener sorbitol.
2 comments - Posted Jan 22, 2008
New Jersey has enacted a law guaranteeing access by amputees to comprehensive health insurance coverage for orthotic and prosthetic care. The new law mandates that health insurance plans offer coverage for orthotic and prosthetic care without caps and co-pays that restrict access to prescribed devices.
1 comment - Posted Jan 21, 2008
Project HOPE, an international health education and humanitarian assistance organization, has launched The India Diabetes Educator Project. The four-year program will train 5,000 healthcare professionals to help counter the near epidemic level of type 2 diabetes in India.
0 comments - Posted Jan 19, 2008
"It feels like you accidentally pricked yourself with a pin, only it's not accidental and you have to do it over and over again in the same areas."
35 comments - Posted Jan 18, 2008
To successfully treat any disease, one must know what disease to treat. Treating only a symptom of the disease will leave the underlying disease unchecked and possibly worse. For example, we evolved the "runny" nose to help us clean out upper respiratory infections. So taking a decongestant to eradicate the symptom of a "runny" nose is actually counterproductive for the underlying disease.
23 comments - Posted Jan 13, 2008
Startling statistics are only one reason sufferers should get help and why research into this lethal combination must continue. On the list of deadly diseases in the United States, diabetes ranks fifth. And for so many reasons: major killers like heart attack and stroke are among a slew of diabetes' potentially lethal complications.
15 comments - Posted Jan 12, 2008
Here's a sour little bit of good news for type 2s: taking two tablespoons of vinegar at bedtime can lower fasting glucose levels the next morning by as much as 6 percent.
19 comments - Posted Jan 8, 2008
You and everybody else alive encounter stress, daily, hourly and minute by minute. As unavoidable, inscrutable, and sometimes as aggressive as the IRS, stress is part of the human condition. It is not just a sense of being tense but is any event that causes a complex physiologic response called the "stress response."
4 comments - Posted Jan 3, 2008
Because scientists often tend to dismiss what they don't fully understand, many of them used to think that C-peptide had no physiological function. But while it's true that C-peptide does nothing to lower blood sugar, recent research is finding that it might have a role in preventing diabetes complications.
19 comments - Posted Jan 3, 2008
December 2007
Awhile back, three macaque monkeys with type 1 diabetes received transplants of 19 pig pancreas primordia, each one smaller than the period at the end of this sentence.
5 comments - Posted Dec 31, 2007
Bayer Diabetes Care has recalled 230,000 bottles of Contour TS test strips after finding that the strips resulted in blood glucose readings 5 to 17 percent higher than actual levels.
0 comments - Posted Dec 29, 2007
There's now plenty of evidence that U.S. ethnic minority groups tend to have higher A1c levels than whites. (Your A1c is the percentage of your hemoglobin cells that are glycated - have sugar stuck to them. The higher your blood sugars are, the more sugar sticks to your hemoglobin over time, and the higher your A1c is.)
1 comment - Posted Dec 24, 2007
Adults with type 2 diabetes who follow individually tailored self-management programs are better able to lower their blood pressure and weight and maintain them over time than adult diabetes patients who don't, say Dutch researchers.
0 comments - Posted Dec 22, 2007
The name insulin comes from the Latin insula, for islands. It refers to the pancreatic islets of Langerhans that contain the beta cells.
4 comments - Posted Dec 20, 2007
"Delight" is a word rarely found in company mission statements, but it's part of Owen Mumford's rather sweet and very British declaration - the company aims to "delight its customers" with its products, keeping in mind that they just might "change the life of our nearest and dearest."
0 comments - Posted Dec 19, 2007
In healthy people, beta cells are like tiny factories that churn out insulin. Proinsulin, which is the raw material for finished insulin, is produced in the endoplasmic reticulum deep within the beta cells.
0 comments - Posted Dec 18, 2007
Low doses of resveratrol, an ingredient found in red wine, make insulin-resistant mice more sensitive to insulin. Don't try this at home, however, because you'd have to drink almost a gallon of wine every day to get the same effect.
3 comments - Posted Dec 17, 2007
Conversation Maps look like a set of very large and colorful children's placemats. Three feet wide and five feet long, each map is covered with a kids-book-style landscape painting illustrating one of five topics:
0 comments - Posted Dec 16, 2007
To conclude our pump survey, we asked you how you'd like to see pumping improved. As usual, you came up with a plethora of intriguing suggestions, although some were a bit more visionary than others: One reader said, "I wish someone would invent a device that could be waved over a meal, and it would display the number of carbs in the meal."
43 comments - Posted Dec 14, 2007
We’d like to call your attention to the superb investigative article in our Dec/Jan 2008 Professional issue, "The Crisis in Diabetes Education" by writer Amy Tenderich. Amy covers the many pressing problems in contemporary diabetes education, not the least of which is the difficult process encountered by new professionals in obtaining their CDE credential.
0 comments - Posted Dec 13, 2007
I love that old Greek proverb, "There is nothing permanent but change," because it's so perfectly applicable to diabetes. It seems that almost every day now we're finding more causes, more treatments, and, inevitably, more problems with new treatments.
0 comments - Posted Dec 13, 2007
The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has approved new Healthcare Common Procedural Coding System (HCPCS, known as "hickpicks") codes for continuous glucose monitoring.
8 comments - Posted Dec 12, 2007
I have to admit that the first time I met David Kliff, I didn't know what to make of his forthright manner. He immediately told me exactly what was on his mind.
0 comments - Posted Dec 7, 2007
Scientists have been having fun again making themselves specially engineered mice. This time they knocked the gene that makes glycogen synthase kinase-3 (GSK-3) right out of their ever-accommodating mice.
0 comments - Posted Dec 5, 2007
Hispanics and African Americans have higher A1c's than whites. That disparity contributes to the unfortunate fact that in the U.S., approximately ten percent of racial differences in mortality have been attributed to diabetes.
3 comments - Posted Dec 5, 2007
Messenger molecules are the letter carriers of your body's postal system. You are probably already familiar with hormones, which are messenger molecules that travel about your bloodstream carrying letters from your organs. Neurotransmitters deliver mail on another route: they transmit messages between your nerves.
0 comments - Posted Dec 4, 2007
You often hear studies described as randomized, double blind, and crossover. That's supposed to be a good thing, but what exactly does it mean?
0 comments - Posted Dec 4, 2007
Diabetes is not a disease of blood sugar. It is a disease of insulin and, perhaps more importantly, leptin signaling. Until that truth is accepted, we will continue to see epidemic growth in type 2 diabetes and obesity, growth that underscores the inadequacy of current conventional medical treatment and the falsity of prevailing nutritional advice.
27 comments - Posted Dec 3, 2007
Scientists from Sydney, Australia, recently identified and mapped the structure of an enzyme that cuts down insulin production in diabetes. Called protein kinase C epsilon (PKCe), it is regulated by fat. For that reason, it may be the missing link that relates obesity to type 2 diabetes.
1 comment - Posted Dec 2, 2007
November 2007
For my contribution this month, I wanted to share an important lesson I learned about twenty years ago from Peggy Wong at the UCSF Diabetes Teaching Center. It concerns how long insulin lasts after you push down that plunger and create a "depot" of insulin under your skin.
12 comments - Posted Nov 28, 2007
Insulin resistance specifically in the brain is being proposed as the reason for the memory loss that characterizes Alzheimer's disease. Because Alzheimer's may be caused by insulin-related dysfunction, some scientists are calling Alzheimer's by a new name: type 3 diabetes.
1 comment - Posted Nov 27, 2007
Novo Nordisk's Levemir, which came out about five years after sanofi-aventis's Lantus, constitutes about twenty percent of the long-acting basal insulin sold worldwide. Lantus, the only other long-acting insulin analogue, makes up the other eighty percent.
3 comments - Posted Nov 26, 2007
Over the course of the year, we meticulously update all our charts to bring you the most accurate information about hundreds of products, services, and medications. Now we've gathered every one of those charts, from humble lancets to sophisticated continuous glucose monitors, into one handy place.
1 comment - Posted Nov 26, 2007
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter; that is, a molecule that carries messages between neurons in your brain. It's a feel-good neurotransmitter that makes you think "I want that! I'm going to get it! And wow, that was great!"
3 comments - Posted Nov 24, 2007
Most diabetes drug trials focus strictly on the medication's effect on blood sugar levels, but ignore that medication's impact on other outcomes that are important to patients, such as quality of life and the risk of complications.
7 comments - Posted Nov 22, 2007
A study out of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center has found that to restore normal glucose levels in type 1 diabetic mice, it's not enough to halt the destruction of their beta cells. You also have to reverse the muscle and fat inflammation that prevents insulin from transferring glucose into those tissues.
1 comment - Posted Nov 22, 2007
According to a May 2007 CNN opinion poll, 64 percent of us think that our government should provide a national health insurance program for all Americans, even if it would require higher taxes. So what's in the works?
15 comments - Posted Nov 21, 2007
Many tests try (and many fail) to accurately predict whether a person will eventually develop type 2 diabetes. But they often test for single conditions, like impaired glucose tolerance, that don't appear until the road to diabetes is already well begun.
0 comments - Posted Nov 20, 2007
Januvia, also known as sitagliptin phosphate, is a DPP-IV inhibitor. It prevents, or inhibits, DPP-IV from inactivating GLP-1. GLP-1 is a naturally produced hormone that increases insulin secretion in response to food.
1 comment - Posted Nov 20, 2007
Fact One: Insulin receptor substrate-2 (Irs2) is a protein that sits on cell surfaces; its job is to allow those cells to respond to insulin.
Fact Two: Starved mice, which have low blood levels of insulin and heightened insulin sensitivity, live longer than well-fed mice.
2 comments - Posted Nov 16, 2007
Diabetes educators are no less than a lifeline for patients, providing vital insights into the self-care behaviors that keep diabetes in check: managing blood sugar, dosing medications and insulin, exercising, and understanding all the numbers involved.
30 comments - Posted Nov 15, 2007
As you may know, November is Diabetes Month and today is Diabetes Day, at least in New York City. The day kicks off in front of the United Nations, and even the Empire State Building will be bathed in blue light, the official diabetes color, to honor the occasion. As much as I love it that we now have our own month and day, I'm thinking: wouldn't it be nicer if we didn't need one?
3 comments - Posted Nov 14, 2007
Living Cells Technologies (LCT) has announced that their Moscow trial of pig cell implantation, which began in June, is well underway: In September, the second of six type 1 patients was injected with 5,000 "islet equivalents per kilogram" of Diabecells into the peritoneal cavity.
4 comments - Posted Nov 14, 2007
A study of 2543 obese Mayo Clinic patients has revealed that only 505 of them were formally diagnosed as obese. If they were diagnosed, it was more likely to be done by a resident than by a staff physician.
3 comments - Posted Nov 13, 2007
A recent study has found that the combination of metformin and sitagliptin lowers A1c's better than either drug alone, apparently because their different mechanisms work together synergistically.
0 comments - Posted Nov 12, 2007
The word leptin comes from the Greek word leptos, meaning thin. A hormone produced by fat cells, it binds to a spot in the brain known as the satiety center, thereby announcing to the brain that the body has had enough to eat, that plenty of energy is stored in the fat, and that there is no need to eat any more right now. In short, its effect on the brain is to reduce appetite.
0 comments - Posted Nov 9, 2007
Floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards, and fires strike fast, creating challenges that can be especially difficult for people with diabetes.
1 comment - Posted Nov 9, 2007
Researchers have discovered a fourth antibody, ZnT8, that helps predict who will get type 1 diabetes later in life. By using the three previously known antibodies, scientists already could predict disease with ninety percent accuracy. By adding this fourth antibody, the prediction rate rises to 98 percent.
1 comment - Posted Nov 8, 2007
I have been injecting insulin into my body since 1963, after an infection with a coxsackie virus (mumps) when I was nine years old. Admittedly, I am insulin-dependent. On the other hand, everyone is insulin-dependent. I just need to inject someone else's insulin (insulin from E.coli in my case).
21 comments - Posted Nov 7, 2007
In research reports, they're always talking about glucose clamps. Two types of clamps are quite commonly used, but they have nothing to do with the common definition of the word clamp. Instead, they are used to measure either how well you metabolize glucose or how sensitive you are to insulin.
1 comment - Posted Nov 6, 2007
Researchers recently followed 38,000 healthy women for ten years to learn if their initial blood pressure influenced whether they developed type 2 diabetes later.
0 comments - Posted Nov 6, 2007
The research group Trust for America's Health has released its fourth annual report card on the state of obesity in the states of America, and the country got a big fat F.
0 comments - Posted Nov 5, 2007
The FDA has received thirty reports of acute pancreatitis (rapid-onset inflammation of the pancreas) in type 2 patients taking Byetta. Twenty-seven of the thirty patients had one or more risk factors for acute pancreatitis, such as gallstones or alcohol use.
1 comment - Posted Nov 5, 2007
According to recent research, we have a finite amount of temptation-resisting resources. If we use up all our self-control resisting one temptation, we don't have any left to use against another temptation.
1 comment - Posted Nov 4, 2007
Nearly 21 million children and adults in the United States have diabetes, and another 54 million people are knocking at that door. Diabetes is the fifth deadliest disease in the nation and may well be the most serious health problem facing America today. Nevertheless, the public doesn't seem to grasp the gravity of the situation, at least not like they did with polio, for instance, or AIDS.
7 comments - Posted Nov 1, 2007
October 2007
This morning, a major meter manufacturer announced that its blood glucose meters will now operate on Microsoft's HealthVault. HealthVault is an online service that allows a patient to store and manage his health records without paying a fee.
32 comments - Posted Oct 31, 2007
Exubera, the inhalable insulin, has been, to speak bluntly, a real bomb. Pretty much the entire diabetic population can say with honesty that they never inhaled.
8 comments - Posted Oct 31, 2007
The FDA has spoken: the heart risk warnings on labels of Avandia (rosiglitazone) and Actos (pioglitazone) will now be surrounded by an emphatic black outline known as a black box. Black boxes will also be added to the warnings on Avandaryl (rosiglitazone and glimepiride), Avandamet (rosiglitazone and metformin), and Duetact (pioglitazone and glimepiride).
3 comments - Posted Oct 31, 2007
March 13, 2008, heralds the third annual World Kidney Day - an event that will be celebrated in more than 60 countries. We take this opportunity to recount how this concept has gained worldwide traction and momentum and to reflect on the challenges faced by its creators and supporters.
1 comment - Posted Oct 29, 2007
Human adenovirus-36 (AD-36) is an unwelcome visitor already because it causes colds, infections like pink-eye, and small intestine inflammation.
0 comments - Posted Oct 27, 2007
On January 6, 2007, the JDRF announced that it was giving $2 million to MacroGenics, a private biotechnology company, to fund a phase II/III clinical trial of teplizumab, a compound owned by MacroGenics. Teplizumab is an antibody engineered to disarm immune T cells once they're set to destroy islets, so it may preserve beta cell function in newly diagnosed diabetic patients.
0 comments - Posted Oct 25, 2007
Stevia is a natural sweetener made from the leaves of a South American herb, Stevia rebaudiana Bertoni, commonly known as sweetleaf or sugarleaf.
7 comments - Posted Oct 24, 2007
More data linking poverty and type 2 diabetes is out, this time from the national Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).
0 comments - Posted Oct 23, 2007
Depression, according to new research just published in The Lancet, is more damaging to your everyday wellbeing than chronic diabetes, angina, asthma, or arthritis. But the most disabling of all is the combination of depression and diabetes: If you have both, you are living at the equivalent of only sixty percent of full health.
3 comments - Posted Oct 22, 2007
Taste buds have little receptors to sense the lovely taste of sugar, but now scientists have found that tasting sweets doesn't end with your tongue.
0 comments - Posted Oct 20, 2007
Recently, researchers from the University of Chicago interviewed 701 adults with diabetes in order to quantify and rank their feelings about diabetes-related complications and about the self-care necessary to avoid those complications.
4 comments - Posted Oct 19, 2007
When calculating glycemic index (GI) values, glucose is arbitrarily given the highest GI value: 100. To assign a GI value to another type of carb, a complex process is used to compare the blood sugar response elicited by the test carb to the blood sugar response provoked by glucose.
2 comments - Posted Oct 18, 2007
The take-home message from the Tufts study is that the GI value of white bread is 70. That's nothing new: The same value has been found in dozens of other studies around the world (1).
2 comments - Posted Oct 18, 2007
Whether or not you get fat is not the critical factor in developing type 2 diabetes, according to a recent mouse study by Texas researchers; instead, it's where that fat is packed away.
1 comment - Posted Oct 16, 2007
First a little background: T cells are white blood cells that attack and eat infected cells or tumor cells. They're told what to attack by other white blood cells called B cells. The B cells "introduce" the T cells to their targets by presenting little pieces of target cells, called antigens, to the T cells. Once the T cells have been properly introduced and know what to target, they can do their deadly work.
0 comments - Posted Oct 16, 2007
The higher your blood glucose is during pregnancy, the greater your child's chances of growing up to be obese, according to a recent study published in Diabetes Care.
0 comments - Posted Oct 15, 2007
Suppose someone you know has been diagnosed with diabetes and you'd like to do something, but you don't know what to do. You might consider giving them a Diabetes Gift Basket, packed with 1001 Tips for Diabetics, special foot lotion, diabetic socks, a Reiki health candle, sugar-free candy, and a diabetic cookbook.
0 comments - Posted Oct 14, 2007
Three million Australians have diabetes, and the disease costs Australia more than three billion dollars a year. In contrast, Australian general practitioners are paid only forty dollars to manage a diabetes patient for a full year.
0 comments - Posted Oct 13, 2007
There's been a plethora of research lately documenting the health benefits of any sort of exercise, no matter how modest. The most recent documents a twelve-week study of 106 sedentary middle-aged folks who were assigned to one of three regimens: walking thirty minutes three days a week; walking thirty minutes five days a week; or doing nothing at all.
0 comments - Posted Oct 12, 2007
Symlin, or pramlintide, is synthetic amylin, a natural hormone that slows stomach emptying and leads to a feeling of fullness. Currently Symlin is used to dampen blood sugar rises in people with diabetes, but it's showing potential as a weight loss drug as well, according to a recent study.
1 comment - Posted Oct 12, 2007
According to Greek researchers, Actos and Avandia were behind a tripling of the cost of medicines used to treat Athenians with type 2 diabetes over the past eight years.
0 comments - Posted Oct 10, 2007
Our diet has changed a great deal since our days as hunter-gatherers on the African plains. Not only do we eat more carbs and fats, but we may also be getting far fewer of the micronutrients that were abundant in the primitive diet.
6 comments - Posted Oct 9, 2007
September 2007
In obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), the upper airway narrows or collapses during sleep, cutting off breathing. People with OSA may be aroused hundreds of times each night, just enough to start breathing again.
0 comments - Posted Sep 30, 2007
In August, a number of august organizations agreed to report the A1c in a new way, as a number called an A1c-derived average glucose, or ADAG.
0 comments - Posted Sep 29, 2007
Despite their best efforts, researchers have been having a hard time getting pancreatic stem cells to grow up into beta cells that can be used for transplantation.
0 comments - Posted Sep 27, 2007
Until now, there were only two blood sugar numbers you had to worry about: your A1c and your fasting glucose level. The first, according to IDF guidelines, should be 6.5% or below, and the second 100 mg/dl or below.
6 comments - Posted Sep 27, 2007
Studies of rats, those ever-useful creatures, have already shown that a fatty heart accompanies obesity and type 2 diabetes. Furthermore, the heart fat produces toxins that cause heart cell death and then heart failure.
0 comments - Posted Sep 20, 2007
For people without diabetes, fancy skin cream is often a sheer indulgence. For people with diabetes, however, it's a far more serious matter.
4 comments - Posted Sep 19, 2007
Your zip code can predict whether your zippers zip, according to a Seattle study that analyzed neighborhood property values by zip code. After examining data from over 8,000 people, researchers from the University of Washington found that for every $100,000 drop in average home prices, obesity rates rose by two percent.
0 comments - Posted Sep 18, 2007
In a recent study out of the University of California at Los Angeles, high blood levels of three cytokines, or messenger proteins, were found to be early markers that predicted the development of type 2 diabetes six years down the road.
0 comments - Posted Sep 17, 2007
A review of sixteen studies, examining 836,941 people who sustained a total of 139,531 hip fractures, has found that diabetes, especially type 1, makes you more likely to break your hip.
0 comments - Posted Sep 15, 2007
Sheri Colberg, PhD, is writing the 2nd edition of her book, The Diabetic Athlete. Updated throughout, it will cover the use of the newest insulins, new medications like Symlin and Byetta, and all the latest devices.
0 comments - Posted Sep 14, 2007
Since the 1950s, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has funded almost all diabetes research worldwide. From its headquarters in Bethesda, Maryland, the NIH oversees a $28 billion annual medical research budget. More than $1 billion of those taxpayer dollars go specifically toward diabetes research. Still, a cure remains frustratingly elusive.
0 comments - Posted Sep 13, 2007
Researchers from the University of Virginia, with funding from the National Institutes of Health, are conducting a study on driving safety with regard to people with type 1 diabetes, and they need your help.
0 comments - Posted Sep 11, 2007
What do we have in common with worms, flies, and mice? All of us, even flies, get fat. And we all share an ancient gene, aptly named Adipose, which apparently controls whether or not we do get fat.
0 comments - Posted Sep 11, 2007
Life in the trenches with type 1 diabetes is challenging. Unpredictable blood sugars can leave a person with diabetes (PWD) feeling frustrated and helpless. The acute toxic effects of abnormal blood sugars also contribute to depression, anxiety, irritability, and food cravings.
4 comments - Posted Sep 9, 2007
In the August 2007 edition of The Lancet, Argentinian researcher Dr. Diego Lowenstein reported that the higher your A1c, the higher your risk of major complications after heart bypass surgery.
0 comments - Posted Sep 5, 2007
Do you know an extraordinarily dedicated CDE, nurse, physician, or other diabetes healthcare professional? Nominate him or her for the first annual "Diabetes Educator of the Year" contest.
1 comment - Posted Sep 4, 2007
Every one of us has two kinds of DNA. Standard DNA is housed in each cell nucleus and is inherited from both parents. Mitochondria, the little cellular power plants found in every cell, have their own independent set of DNA that is inherited from your mother only.
0 comments - Posted Sep 3, 2007
A study published in the August 2007 Lancet examined 8291 Italians who'd recently had a heart attack. Three years later, a full third of them had developed either type 2 diabetes or impaired fasting glucose.
0 comments - Posted Sep 1, 2007
August 2007
Diabetic retinopathy, a condition in which bleeding inside the eye causes damage to the retina, is the leading cause of blindness among working age adults. Early treatment is key to keeping you from that dark path.
1 comment - Posted Aug 31, 2007
Researchers from Alberta have found that when they fed baby rats diet foods and drinks, the little rats' ability to assess how much energy is in foods was thrown out of whack.
0 comments - Posted Aug 30, 2007
Americans spend 275 billion dollars on prescription medicines every single year, sixty percent of it on generics. But in the next five years, the twenty-year patents are going to expire on enough brand-name medicines to account for about 60 billion dollars of that total. And the generics that spring up to replace those drugs will be thirty to eighty percent cheaper.
3 comments - Posted Aug 26, 2007
Dr. Stephen Covey is a mesmerizing lifestyle guru who has revolutionized business management with his seven principles of living life effectively. When his wife was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, he was shocked to learn that four out of five people don't know how to manage their diabetes.
2 comments - Posted Aug 24, 2007
MedPage Today, a medical news service for physicians, has published the results of a reader poll about Avandia attitudes. Only nine percent of respondents said they would continue prescribing it without reservations, and one in four said it should be taken off the market.
0 comments - Posted Aug 23, 2007
You may as well get into the habit of tuning in to Diabetes Health TV at noon Pacific time, because we're rolling out new shows at a rapid clip.
0 comments - Posted Aug 21, 2007
Recently, four men and sixteen women with metabolic syndrome, weighing an average of 200 pounds, were put on the low carb South Beach diet for three months.
1 comment - Posted Aug 17, 2007
Friday at 12:00 noon Pacific time, Diabetes Health's flagship TV show, Diabetes Live, is coming to you live on our website at DiabetesHealth.com.
0 comments - Posted Aug 16, 2007
Hemochromatosis is the most common single gene disease in the United States, more common than cystic fibrosis, Huntington's disease, and muscular dystrophy combined.
9 comments - Posted Aug 16, 2007
Studies have already shown that people with diabetes do worse than non-diabetics after being hospitalized for stroke, heart attack, and heart surgery. Now researchers have found that they do worse after being hospitalized for trauma (a physical injury) as well.
2 comments - Posted Aug 9, 2007
Another gene implicated in type 1 diabetes has been discovered, called KIAA0350. When added to the four genes already known, it brings us one step closer to finding all fifteen or more gene mutations that may interact with each other to cause type 1.
0 comments - Posted Aug 8, 2007
Both Bristol-Myers Squibb and GlaxoSmithKline are developing new drugs that block the re-absorption of excess glucose by the kidneys, allowing it to be excreted by the body instead.
0 comments - Posted Aug 4, 2007
It's a complex mental process that your doctors go through when they choose your medicines, according to a recent survey of several hundred physicians.
0 comments - Posted Aug 2, 2007
On July 30, 2007, a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) panel voted 22 to 1 to keep Avandia on the market, right after agreeing by a vote of 20 to 3 that Avandia does increase heart risks. Now the FDA will decide what kind of warning should appear on the Actos and Avandia labels. It has already called for a black box warning, the sternest possible, on Avandia.
0 comments - Posted Aug 1, 2007
July 2007
Peripheral neuropathy (limb nerve damage) eventually afflicts fifty percent of people with diabetes; worse still, it leads to an amputation every fifty seconds world-wide. At the moment, nothing is approved in the U.S. to treat peripheral neuropathy, only to alleviate the pain that it causes. That might change soon, however.
6 comments - Posted Jul 31, 2007
Stressed mice get fat, according to a study out of Georgetown University Medical Center. And now they know the mechanism that does it; in fact, they can manipulate that mechanism to make the mice fat, or they can block the mechanism and keep the mice from getting fat no matter how stressed they may be.
0 comments - Posted Jul 31, 2007
In 2001, just over a third of Americans had their diabetes well controlled, based upon an A1c of seven percent or lower. In 2006, however, more than half of them had their diabetes well controlled. These are the results of a study of nearly 5 million patients performed from 2001 to 2007 by Quest Diagnostics Inc. and analyzed by Dr. Francine Kaufman of the University of Southern California.
0 comments - Posted Jul 28, 2007
Diabetes and pre-diabetes are associated with a seventy-five percent increased risk of Alzheimer's disease. Research has already shown that insulin resistance, with its accompanying high levels of circulating insulin, increases brain and spinal cord inflammation markers and neurotoxic peptides (molecules that cause brain and nervous system damage), just like early Alzheimer's.
0 comments - Posted Jul 28, 2007
Chicago - Eli Lilly and Company, the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) and the American Diabetes Association (ADA) today announced the U.S. launch of the Inspired by Diabetes Creative Expression Competition, a global and national contest asking people with diabetes, as well as their family and friends, to express how diabetes has had an impact on their lives - and share those stories with others around the world.
0 comments - Posted Jul 27, 2007
This issue, we lay out the many devices with which diabetic people must poke themselves: syringes, pen needles, and lancing devices. And we top them off with a sprinkling of sugar: a chart outlining all the sources of fast-acting glucose.
0 comments - Posted Jul 26, 2007
CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA, July 24, 2007 - Although they have a greater than average risk of developing retinal problems and blindness, many people with diabetes never visit their eye doctor.
0 comments - Posted Jul 25, 2007
A team of five seniors and two freshmen at Johns Hopkins University has devised a little "pouch" to hold microcapsules of beta cells in the portal vein, from which the cells can send out insulin while safely protected inside. It's made by sandwiching a porous cylinder of nylon mesh between two cylindrical metal stents, similar to the ones that are used to keep clogged blood vessels open.
0 comments - Posted Jul 23, 2007
The average person's risk of developing type 2 diabetes is about seven percent. Now an Icelandic biotech company has developed the deCODE T2™ test, an assessment that tells you if your risk is double that.
0 comments - Posted Jul 22, 2007
We are seeking stories of people who are diabetes heroes. You know them: they've struggled against adversity and overcome it with grace. They've gone above and beyond to help others, or they're simply an inspiration to everyone they meet.
0 comments - Posted Jul 20, 2007
If your Paradigm pump has been not been exposed to powerful magnetic fields, such as those found near MRI machines, you have nothing to worry about. Go about your merry way and keep up the good work. In the unlikely event that such exposure has occurred, however, you need to be aware that it may cause the pump's motor to malfunction and significantly over-deliver insulin, causing severe hypoglycemia.
2 comments - Posted Jul 20, 2007
An article in New Zealand's Dominion Post has reported that a young woman in Wellington, New Zealand, was nearly poisoned to death by the aspartame in her chewing gum.
4 comments - Posted Jul 18, 2007
Apparently death doesn't have a glass ceiling. After examining data from 20,000 people who were followed from the seventies through the nineties as part of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys, researchers have found that diabetic men are dying less, but diabetic women aren't.
0 comments - Posted Jul 18, 2007
Lantus and Levemir have a lot in common. Both are basal insulin formulas, which means that they last for a long time in the body and act as background insulin, with a slow feed that mimics the constant low output of insulin produced by a healthy pancreas.
114 comments - Posted Jul 17, 2007
Nearly four billion dollars: That's how much it cost for a single year (2001) of diabetes-related inpatient care. Two-thirds of that was for preventable conditions. Why that prevention isn't happening was the topic of a recent symposium on the "State of the Science on Nursing Best Practices for Diabetes Self-Management," sponsored in Philadelphia by the American Journal of Nursing (AJN).
0 comments - Posted Jul 15, 2007
The low carb diet definitely has its party faithful, but how exactly does the low carb diet cause your body to burn fat? Earlier studies have shown that feeding rodents a low carb, high fat diet caused fat usage and weight loss, but the mechanism of the process wasn't known.
1 comment - Posted Jul 14, 2007
In a congressional hearing on June 13, 2007, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) revealed that it has called for a black box warning, the sternest possible, on both Actos and Avandia.
0 comments - Posted Jul 12, 2007
How elevated does your blood sugar have to be before you're diagnosed with gestational diabetes? Not near as elevated as we used to think, according to the findings of the Hyperglycemia and Adverse Pregnancy Outcome (HAPO) Study.
0 comments - Posted Jul 10, 2007
June 2007
In days of yore, along about the time when bloodletting was considered a legitimate cure, maggots were a popular tool in the surgeon's black bag. In the Civil War, doctors employed busy maggots to clean rotten tissue from wounds that might otherwise have led to amputation.
0 comments - Posted Jun 21, 2007
In the complex process that moves glucose from your blood across cell membranes into your cells, the glucose transporters called GLUTs are primary players. They hand off glucose from one side of a cell membrane to the other by exposing a glucose-binding site toward the outside of the cell.
0 comments - Posted Jun 17, 2007
The world's first online clinical conference for diabetes treatment, research, and education has opened for business. On this new site, which is free, health care professionals and diabetes advocates around the globe may "attend" virtual lectures, network with colleagues, and discuss cases.
0 comments - Posted Jun 14, 2007
A University of Chicago research team reports that spending less than $500 per patient to improve care could reduce patients' risk of diabetes complications, including blindness, kidney failure, and coronary artery disease, which can cost $44,000 per patient annually.
0 comments - Posted Jun 12, 2007
Patients with diabetes are less likely to have a heart attack or die if they stay on anti-clotting medication for a full year after a stenting procedure.
0 comments - Posted Jun 11, 2007
Medco, a pharmacy benefit managing company, has released its 2007 Drug Trend Report, and diabetes drugs are big news. The report projects that between 2007 and 2009, there could be a near 70 percent increase in spending on endocrine and diabetes drugs.
0 comments - Posted Jun 8, 2007
University of California, San Francisco - In head-to-head trials of two drugs, the one deemed better appears to depend largely on who is funding the study, according to an analysis of nearly 200 statin-drug comparisons carried out between 1999 and 2005.
0 comments - Posted Jun 5, 2007
If you've got type 2 diabetes, you're eighty-three percent more likely to develop Parkinson's disease than people without diabetes. This somber finding by Finnish researchers, published in Diabetes Care, was derived from a study of more than 50,000 Finns over 18 years.
0 comments - Posted Jun 2, 2007
May 2007
Analysis of several recent studies indicates that Avandia (rosiglitazone), a type 2 diabetes medication that's been taken by more than six million people worldwide, is associated with a 43 percent increased risk of heart attack and with a borderline-significant increased risk of heart attack-related death.
0 comments - Posted May 31, 2007
The recent ruckus over the drug rosiglitazone (Avandia) has been portrayed as another case of Big Pharma foisting a dangerous drug on the public while the overworked FDA can't keep up.
0 comments - Posted May 31, 2007
PHILADELPHIA, April 19, 2007 - Eat right. Exercise. Monitor blood sugar. Take medication regularly. This is the advice physicians give the more than 20 million Americans affected with diabetes. Yet implementation of these recommendations is often far from ideal, putting patients at greater risk for damage to the heart, kidneys, eyes, and feet.
0 comments - Posted May 3, 2007
April 2007
If food groups were sporting leagues, carbs would be the NFL. You've got your low carb teams, your high carb vegan teams, and your middling carb teams—and each team believes that truth is on its side.
0 comments - Posted Apr 24, 2007
Carbs and carbs alone, not fat, increase body weight. It doesn't matter whether the carbs are from sugar, bread, fruit, or vegetables: They’re all rapidly digested and quickly converted to blood glucose. A short time after a carb-rich meal, the glucose in your bloodstream rises rapidly, and your pancreas produces a large amount of insulin to take the excess glucose out.
27 comments - Posted Apr 24, 2007
Remember the big picture: Populations that stick to traditional high-carbohydrate diets (for example, Asian rice-based diets) typically have low rates of obesity and diabetes. When they abandon traditional rice-based diets in favor of meatier Western fare, carbohydrate intake falls, but weight problems and diabetes increase.
4 comments - Posted Apr 24, 2007
When I developed diabetes in 1946, physicians thought that the high illness and death rate of diabetics was due to dietary fat and the supposedly resultant elevation of serum cholesterol. Since the DCCT trial, the scientific literature overwhelmingly supports the role of elevated blood sugar in all long-term diabetic complications.
3 comments - Posted Apr 24, 2007
Let’s be realistic and take a long-term perspective in this “which diet is best” debate, rather than wasting time quibbling over extremes—from low-carb to vegan. You’ll have type 2 diabetes for the rest of your life, and you’ll likely struggle with weight management throughout your life as well. The major challenge in weight loss, and even more so in weight maintenance, is long-term adherence.
13 comments - Posted Apr 24, 2007
Milpitas, CA, March 30, 2007 – LifeScan, Inc., maker of OneTouch® Brand Blood Glucose Monitoring Systems, is offering customers that own one of several models of OneTouch Brand Systems a no-charge meter upgrade to one of the company's latest, most innovative meters.(1)
0 comments - Posted Apr 20, 2007
The story of Doug Burns’ arrest during a low blood sugar episode has generated a lot of comments from the diabetes community. How did it happen, why did it happen, and how could it have been handled differently?
1 comment - Posted Apr 19, 2007
GlucoLight's continuous, non-invasive device is a novel approach to glucose monitoring in the acute care environment. Using optical coherence tomography (OCT), the device is able to measure blood glucose levels through a unique anatomical area in the skin that shows physiological changes that directly correlate to changes in blood glucose. The GlucoLight monitor displays real time glucose measurements with an initial single point calibration.
0 comments - Posted Apr 18, 2007
Dr. Bernhard Hering of the University of Minnesota is recognized the world over as the premier expert on pancreatic islet transplants. He sees islet transplantation as the best hope for the cure of type 1 diabetes, and his optimism is supported by his research.
0 comments - Posted Apr 11, 2007
March 2007
Diabetes Health continues to roll out exciting changes to our newly redesigned website. All articles now have a comments field where you can speak your mind. If you choose to register as a Diabetes Health community member, your comments will post immediately, allowing you to interact with other members of the Diabetes Health community in real time.
0 comments - Posted Mar 29, 2007
Q: Please describe your background.
Morey Haymond: A pediatric endocrinologist by training, I have been involved in
metabolic studies of kids, infants, and adults for 35 years. I work with children who have disorders of
carbohydrate metabolism, including diabetes and hypoglycemia. Understanding the regulation of those
processes has been a focus of my research, and I have looked at amino acid and fat metabolism as well.
1 comment - Posted Mar 29, 2007
Q: Are there any long-term side effects of the popular drugs to treat type 2 diabetes?
2 comments - Posted Mar 24, 2007
Warwick, R.I. - EuroSocks North America, a top producer of sport-specific performance and compression socks, has introduced Euros Rx for Diabetics. Developed in collaboration with a team of physicians, the patent-pending dual-tone technology design comes in white and dark dress sock colors while preserving the patented white bottom to allow diabetics to easily monitor the condition of their feet.
1 comment - Posted Mar 14, 2007
New York, NY - March 13, 2007 - Former President Bill Clinton joined global diabetes leaders today in New York City to discuss ways to break the curve of the diabetes pandemic at a forum hosted by Novo Nordisk and supported by the International Diabetes Federation (IDF).
0 comments - Posted Mar 13, 2007
Approximately a million people a day look to the Internet for answers about diabetes. Now Diabetes Health, a long-time leader in patient advocacy through Diabetes Health magazine, has launched the best site on the web for finding those answers.
0 comments - Posted Mar 9, 2007
BOSTON - March 1, 2007 - A new study from Joslin Diabetes Center may shed light on why some people can eat excessive amounts of food and not gain weight or develop type 2 diabetes, while others are more likely to develop obesity and this most common form of diabetes on any diet.
0 comments - Posted Mar 7, 2007
NEW YORK - Feb. 28 - Duane Reade Holdings, Inc., the leading drug store chain in the New York metropolitan area, today announced the launch of the Diabetes Resource Center, a comprehensive training and educational facility for patients with diabetes mellitus.
0 comments - Posted Mar 7, 2007
Are ketones a healthy or an unhealthy sign?
Ketones in the urine can be a danger sign if your blood sugar is too
high and insulin levels are too low. It can indicate acidosis, an
abnormal condition usually occurring in people with out of control
type 1 diabetes requiring immediate medical attention. Ketones can
also occur because of other metabolic conditions.
0 comments - Posted Mar 1, 2007
February 2007
PRINCETON, N.J. - January 25, 2007 - Former President Bill Clinton will be the keynote speaker at the Global Changing Diabetes Leadership Forum, taking place on March 13, 2007 in New York City hosted by Novo Nordisk and supported by the International Diabetes Federation.
5 comments - Posted Feb 28, 2007
BETHESDA, MD - February 21, 2007 - The National Foundation for Infectious Diseases (NFID) is calling for the medical and public health community to increase alarmingly low influenza vaccination rates among persons with diabetes – the fifth deadliest disease in the U.S.
0 comments - Posted Feb 23, 2007
Many people think of their blood glucose meter as a sort of sophisticated electronic toy. But the numbers it displays after you check your blood really are meaningful.
0 comments - Posted Feb 1, 2007
You might know me as the publisher of Diabetes Health. I’m also a mother of two, the daughter of a woman who died of type 2 diabetes, and a theater buff. But from now on, I hope you’ll come to know me as someone who brings important stories to you every issue, stories about people who are making a difference in diabetes.
0 comments - Posted Feb 1, 2007
I’d like to thank Diabetes Health for inviting me to be the professional editor of this issue of Diabetes Health Professional. I’ve enjoyed a long and rewarding relationship with the readers and staff of Diabetes Health in the past, and I’m delighted to be walking down this new path. So much of what I love about being a diabetes educator is the sense of connection I feel not only with patients, but also with other healthcare professionals. I hope that with this column, Diabetes Health can foster that vital sense of community among us all.
0 comments - Posted Feb 1, 2007
We’ve made big strides on our new Web site since I last wrote to you, and it’s shaping up into an exciting and dynamic community gathering place. Once it’s been inaugurated, you’ll want to drop in on a daily basis and check out what’s happened since the day before. We’re going to be posting all our articles hot off the press, and the input from you will be right there as well, ready for the lively back-and-forth that already animates your letters to the editor.
0 comments - Posted Feb 1, 2007
January 2007
We’re putting out a new edition just for professionals, with even more of the valuable content you’ve come to expect from the editors of Diabetes Health (formerly Diabetes Interview). We still offer the same honest comparison charts and provocative information that you won’t see anywhere else. What’s different? The Professional edition has a different cover design, different advertisements, and additional content especially for you, the professional.
0 comments - Posted Jan 1, 2007
December 2006
We often take our teeth for granted, but the mouth is the first part of the digestive process. It’s amazing how what we put into it and what comes out of it can get us in so much trouble.
2 comments - Posted Dec 1, 2006
November 2006
Diabetes Health magazine, a leading and highly valued source for diabetes awareness and education, is doing its part to honor National Diabetes Month by offering (for a limited time) free subscriptions to its newly launched digital magazine, “Diabetes Health Digital Advantage™.”
0 comments - Posted Nov 16, 2006
October 2006
Rezulin, the first thiazolidinedione drug, was withdrawn from the market in 2000. Just three years earlier, the FDA had approved Rezulin through a “fast track” approval process, marking January 1997 as the beginning of a new era in type 2 diabetes management by helping type 2s make use of their own insulin more effectively.
0 comments - Posted Oct 1, 2006
September 2006
Fresh from the ADA Scientific Sessions in Washington, D.C., we present over 30 diabetes studies from scientists around the world.
0 comments - Posted Sep 1, 2006
April 2006
What would you tell endocrinologists and primary care physicians (PCPs) about Avandia (rosiglitazone maleate), Avandamet (rosiglitazone maleate and metformin HCl) and Avandaryl (rosiglizatone maleate and glimepiride) as treatment options for diabetics?
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
Why are today’s insulin syringes and pen needles better than ever?
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
Why are today’s meters better than ever?
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
With the new basal-bolus insulin landscape, what is the most important thing that endocrinologists and primary care physicians need to know so that their insulin-using patients can follow the best possible regimen?
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
John H. Holcombe, MD, is a clinical associate professor of pediatrics at the Indiana University School of Medicine and medical fellow, diabetes, for Eli Lilly and Co.
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
If you are an endocrinologist or primary care physician who works with diabetics, you have undoubtedly heard of the insulin pen. You probably know of their popularity in Europe or have heard testimonials from pen users about their ease of use.
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
For diabetes patients who inject insulin through a syringe, the people at Becton-Dickinson (BD) say that they should always know exactly which brand, dose capacity and needle size to use and why.
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
An interview with Alan Marcus, MD, FACP, the global medical director at Medtronic Diabetes
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
Mary is a 64-year-old woman who has been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes for 14 years. She is obese at 220 pounds. Mary has been treated with a sulfonylurea (a medication that stimulates the pancreas to secrete insulin, such as glypizide and glyburide) for the past 10 years. Her glucose control for the past three or four years has not been good. A recent A1C was 9.5% (normal range is 4% to 6%, with a goal of 7%). Metformin (Glucophage) and rosiglitazone (Avandia) were added to her sulfonylurea. Both her pre-meal and post-meal glucose values improved and her A1C came down to 7.8%. However, her fasting blood glucose levels were in the upper 100 mg/dl to low 200 mg/dl range. She was afraid of “the needle” and did not want to start on insulin. In addition, Mary was recently diagnosed with early diabetic eye disease (retinopathy) and nerve disease (neuropathy).
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
Several months ago, I met Sophia, a woman in her mid-40s who had been struggling to manage her type 2 diabetes for years. Her blood glucose levels were typically well above 300 mg/dl, and she had an equally high A1C of 12.5%. She made it clear that the last thing she wanted was insulin.
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
Last fall, Bob was surprised when his primary care doctor called to tell him that his recent blood tests showed that he had type 2 diabetes. The doctor immediately put Bob on 15 milligrams of Actos each day and advised him to stay away from sugar and to come back in three months for more blood work.
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
At age 25, Dee was initially diagnosed with gestational diabetes in 1972. After giving birth, she was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. Insulin was started with a daily injection of morning NPH and progressed to twice-daily doses. Dee did not have good control with either regimen.
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
Lois Jovanovic, MD, is currently the CEO & chief scientific officer at The Sansum Diabetes Research Institute along with being an adjunct professor of Bimolecular Science and Engineering at The University of California-Santa Barbara and a clinical professor of medicine at The University of Southern California-Keck School of Medicine. Dr. Jovanovic has devoted her career to diabetes and diabetes-related research. Her expertise is in intensified insulin delivery, continuous glucose monitoring and the creation of an artificial beta-cell system. Her favorite research projects are in the field of diabetes and pregnancy—both type 1 diabetic pregnant women and gestational diabetic woman.
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
Diabetics who visit a diabetes care specialist have better A1Cs than those who visit a primary care physician.
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
High blood glucose coupled with inflammation is a one-two punch that researchers say is associated with an “advanced early carotid atherosclerosis progression and increased risk of new vascular events in diabetic as well as nondiabetic subjects.”
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
For patients with the metabolic syndrome, Iranian researchers say the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet can likely reduce most of the risks associated with the condition.
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
For patients who have hypertension or who are at risk for it, Spanish researchers say that low-fat (but not whole-fat) dairy food consumption is associated with a lower risk of hypertension.
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
French researchers say that dietary fiber plays a protective role against cardiovascular disease, and they are calling for increased fiber consumption.
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
One way to get overweight patients to consume fewer calories is to get them to eat egg-based breakfasts. Researchers say that compared to a bagel-based breakfast, the egg-based breakfast induced greater satisfaction of hunger and significantly reduced short-term food intake.
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
Although they are equally effective when it comes to delivering insulin, more insulin-using patients expressed a preference to continue using an insulin pen after trying one.
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
Because people with diabetes sometimes suffer from visual impairment as well as reduced manual dexterity, Japanese researchers assessed the reliability of dose selection and setting of five insulin devices by patients using auditory and sensory confirmation.
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
Valsartan (Diovan) significantly reduces systolic and diastolic blood pressure at dosages of 60 mg/dl and has a “significantly greater effect” in reducing micro- and macroalbuminuria in people with type 2 who have albuminuria.
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
Researchers at the Diabetes Research Institute at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine wrote a paper discussing the heart-protective properties of thiazolidinediones (TZDs) such as Avandia and Actos.
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
For type 2s who suffer from kidney disease, treatment with ruboxistaurin was shown to reduce albuminuria and maintain estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) for more than one year. Ruboxistaurin—a PKC inhibitor manufactured by Eli Lilly and Company—may have added benefit in established therapies for diabetic kidney disease.
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
Adding the sulfonylurea glimepiride (Amaryl) to insulin therapy results in “sustained improvement of glycemic control in patients with poorly controlled type 2 diabetes,” according to researchers at the department of endocrinology and metabolism at Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine.
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
C-reactive protein (CRP) is an inflammation marker that can be an underlying cause of a host of metabolic conditions, among them insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome and diabetes. CRP, according to researchers at the State University of New York Health Sciences Center, also has been shown to be a strong independent predictor of vascular events.
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
New Zealand researchers say that in clinical trials of people with type 2 diabetes, Actos as stand-alone therapy or in combination with metformin, repaglinide, insulin or a sulphonylurea induced “both long- and short-term improvements in [blood glucose] control and serum lipid profiles.”
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
A group of Buffalo, NY, researchers recommend that patients with uncontrolled type 2 diabetes who take extremely high doses of insulin give the insulin pump a try.
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
Pump therapy in preschool children, according to researchers at Texas Children’s Hospital, is “feasible and safe.”
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
Spanish researchers claim that in most studies of small children with diabetes, insulin pump therapy resulted in improved A1Cs and a decreased rate of hypoglycemia without an abnormal increase in body mass index (BMI) and without adversely affecting psychosocial outcomes in young people with type 1.
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
Dutch researchers say that treatment of diabetes in pregnant women should be aimed at achieving A1C levels within the range of 6% or less. They add that “a minimum of 10 self-monitored blood glucose determinations daily is necessary to obtain adequate information of all daily glucose fluctuations.”
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
LifeScan researchers say that at any given time, “there may be differences between palm and fingertip glucose values because of glycemic instability and/or test methodology.”
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
A majority of diabetes patients cannot accurately estimate their blood glucose levels, leading researchers to suggest that home testing is a necessary part of diabetes self-care.
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
For people with type 2, self-monitoring of blood glucose (SMBG) is associated with decreased diabetes-related problems, leading researchers to suggest that SMBG “may be associated with a healthier lifestyle and/or better disease management.”
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
Compared with other basal insulins, French researchers suggest that insulin detemir (Levemir) may offer a “better reproducibility.” In addition, it may also reduce the risk of hypoglycemia and lead patients to titrate their insulin doses more easily.
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
For people with type 2, Lantus in combination with oral medications can be a cost-equivalent alternative to conventional insulin therapy.
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
In three comparative randomized trials, researchers at the department of medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, demonstrated that type 2s who used premixed insulins were more likely to reach blood glucose goals than those using only Lantus once daily.
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is significantly associated with a moderately increased cardiovascular disease risk among type 2s, according to Italian researchers.
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
Hong Kong researchers say that if you have type 2 and suffer from kidney disease, you may be better off getting structured care from a pharmacist-diabetes specialist team.
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
Although people with diabetes use many different approaches to help them adhere to treatment regimens, researchers say that there is little evidence that they are effective. However, in a study they conducted, they found that some “adherence aids” do work and lead to better diabetes control.
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
For men with type 2 who suffer from erectile dysfunction, quality of life can decrease over the course of three years, according to the results of a recent study.
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
A recent study compared the effect of adding exenatide (Byetta) or insulin glargine (Lantus) to type 2 patients’ treatment regimens. The type 2s previously had been taking metformin and a sulfonylurea with little success.
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
If you have patients with diabetes, advise them to maintain good dental hygiene. A recent report states that people with diabetes have a higher severity of periodontal disease.
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
If you are a primary care physician, chances are that half of the diabetes patients who pay you a visit use some form of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM).
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
A recent report in The Practicing Midwife suggests that women with diabetes should be “encouraged and supported to breastfeed their babies from birth by giving them an understanding of the general and specific benefits this will provide.”
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
Compared to nondiabetics, Canadian researchers say people with diabetes have a greater rate of decline in cognitive function and a greater risk of cognitive decline.
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
Australian researchers emphasize that therapies that inhibit the formation and accumulation of advanced glycation end-products (AGEs) or that “remove established AGE modifications” will be an important part of treating diabetics with kidney problems.
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
Healthcare professionals are advised to tell their patients that a high body mass index (BMI) is a “common, strong and potentially modifiable risk factor for end-stage kidney disease.”
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
Having diabetes, especially type 1, puts you at an increased risk for all non-vertebral fractures—in particular, hip fractures.
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
For pediatric patients with type 1, researchers are saying that prolonged moderate exercise results in a “consistent reduction in plasma glucose and the frequent occurrence of hypoglycemia when pre-exercise glucose concentrations are less than 120 mg/dl.” They add that treatment with 15 grams of oral glucose is “often insufficient to reliably treat hypoglycemia during exercise in these youngsters.”
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
Transplant experts at the Section of Transplantation in the University of Chicago Department of Surgery say that an artificial pancreas has promising potential as an approach to preventing or reversing complications associated with diabetes.
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
“The prevalence of celiac disease is increased in patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus,” according to Turkish researchers. “Since many patients may be asymptomatic, it is suggested that all diabetic patients should be screened for this disease.”
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
In 1998, Eli Lilly & Co.’s rapid-acting insulin analogue lispro (Humalog) appeared on the U.S. market, followed in 2000 by Novo Nordisk’s rapid-acting counterpart aspart (NovoLog). Joined now by sanofi-aventis’ glulisine (Apidra), these rapid-acting insulins offer both convenience and improved blood glucose control to your patients who require bolus insulin.
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
Recent developments in the treatment of diabetes mellitus have shown that “tight” control and intensive therapy are necessary to prevent complications, increased morbidity and mortality. We are all familiar with the findings of the DCCT and various UKPDS studies and sub-studies. The importance of these “landmark” studies does not need any further discussion at this time.
2 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
Blood glucose meters have become too much of a good thing. It’s nearly impossible to keep track of the many different meters now available. My directory at www.mendosa.com/meters is the most comprehensive, and I think that there are currently 50 different meters from 15 different vendors on the American market.
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2006
December 2005
What is Roche Diagnostic’s position in the diabetes care industry?
0 comments - Posted Dec 1, 2005
November 2005
While treatment options for severe mental illnesses such as schizophrenia have improved greatly over the past few decades, there is increasing concern among clinicians and researchers that a certain class of antipsychotic medication may have disturbing side effects.
1 comment - Posted Nov 1, 2005
Diabetes researchers from Columbia University, the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) and the National Institutes of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases studied the effects of Ala-Ala—a humanized Fc-mutated anti-CD3 monoclonal antibody—on the progression of type 1 diabetes in patients with recent-onset disease. The study was a follow-up to an article by a team that included UCSF’s Jeffrey Bluestone, MD, and Columbia University’s Kevan Herold, MD, that appeared in the May 30, 2002, issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
0 comments - Posted Nov 1, 2005
September 2005
Diabetes professionals from all over the world descended on San Diego, California, this past June for the 65th Annual American Diabetes Association Scientific Sessions. Some brought with them the latest drugs, meters, pumps and software. Others came armed with research.
0 comments - Posted Sep 1, 2005
August 2005
How does Novo Nordisk continue to evolve in the diabetes care industry?
0 comments - Posted Aug 1, 2005
Although the incidence of some types of cancer has been reported to be higher in diabetics, this is not the case with lung cancer.
0 comments - Posted Aug 1, 2005
July 2005
Molly-Jayne Bangert, BSN, RN, CDE, working in the rural Southwestern United States, is passionate about increasing diabetes awareness and reducing risks associated with diabetes and pre-diabetes
0 comments - Posted Jul 1, 2005
June 2005
What is Disetronic’s role in the pump market right now?
0 comments - Posted Jun 1, 2005
Diabetes is associated with a reduced risk of prostate cancer, but only several years after diagnosis of diabetes.
0 comments - Posted Jun 1, 2005
May 2005
In many adults with diabetes, hyperglycemia (high blood glucose) is associated with mild cognitive dysfunction.
0 comments - Posted May 1, 2005
April 2005
Chris Reichert, RN, MS, CDE, is the director of the Diabetes Care Center at Parkview in the Parkview Medical Center in Pueblo, Colorado. In 1990, she developed the diabetes program at Parkview and became a certified diabetes educator in 1992.
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2005
February 2005
Theresa Garnero, APRN, BC-ADM, MSN, CDE, was named Diabetes Educator of the Year by the American Association of Diabetes Educators (AADE).
0 comments - Posted Feb 1, 2005
January 2005
The risk of cardiovascular disease is greatly increased in people with diabetes. To address the problem of diabetes complications, the American Diabetes Association (ADA) has developed “The ABCs of Diabetes.”
0 comments - Posted Jan 1, 2005
The insulin pump remains the gold standard for optimal control of type 1 diabetes and for anyone who needs intensive insulin therapy.
0 comments - Posted Jan 1, 2005
What are the biggest challenges facing the insulin pump market today?
0 comments - Posted Jan 1, 2005
December 2004
What are the biggest challenges facing the insulin market today?
4 comments - Posted Dec 1, 2004
This month, we feature Frida Theros, RD, CD, CDE, who works with the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah in Cedar City, Utah.
0 comments - Posted Dec 1, 2004
September 2004
This month, we feature Allen Bennett King, MD, CDE, FACP, FACE, assistant clinical professor at the University of California Natividad Medical Center. Dr. King is the cofounder and medical director of the Diabetes Care Center in Salinas, California.
0 comments - Posted Sep 1, 2004
Alcohol tends to lower blood glucose. This means you do not need to take extra insulin or medication to cover the alcohol you drink. In fact, it can be dangerous to do so.
0 comments - Posted Sep 1, 2004
August 2004
Recent studies predict that the worldwide incidence of diabetes will increase by 60 percent to over 300 million cases by the year 2025. The overwhelming majority will be type 2 cases.
0 comments - Posted Aug 1, 2004
July 2004
One of the promises of technology is to be connected to other people without actual physical contact.
0 comments - Posted Jul 1, 2004
June 2004
If you want the best quality care for your type 2 diabetes, see the same physician at each visit to your diabetes outpatient clinic (DOC), especially if that physician specializes in diabetes.
0 comments - Posted Jun 1, 2004
April 2004
When your last A1C registered at more than 7 percent, did your primary care physician take action to lower it?
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2004
The American Academy of Family Physicians now publishes a diabetes treatment guide for clinicians that offers what it calls “practical advice for treating patients with diabetes.”
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2004
March 2004
I struggle to understand why you are publishing information recommending low-or no-carb meals for people with diabetes.
0 comments - Posted Mar 1, 2004
People with diabetes aged 65 and older receive better diabetes care than do younger patients.
0 comments - Posted Mar 1, 2004
Because physicians constantly require updated knowledge to help treat their type 2 patients, Pfizer has developed PfizerDiabetes.com (dead link: Aug 2010).
0 comments - Posted Mar 1, 2004
February 2004
Healthcare professionals who adhere to clinical practice guidelines have more satisfied patients, according to a recent Israeli study.
0 comments - Posted Feb 1, 2004
At the August 2003 conference of the American Association of Diabetes Educators in Salt Lake City, Utah, HealtheTech Inc. of Golden, Colorado, showcased two of its new products for diabetes healthcare professionals:
0 comments - Posted Feb 1, 2004
May 2003
"Now is a wonderful time to consider a research career in childhood diabetes," says Georgeanna Klingensmith, MD, who heads the Division of Pediatrics at the Barbara Davis Center at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. "We need young people with energy and enthusiasm to take these new findings in molecular biology, genetics, and immunology and put them together to move the field ahead."
0 comments - Posted May 1, 2003
April 2003
"Substantive" e-mails between patients and doctors should occur only in the context of a pre-existing patient-doctor relationship, cautions the eRisk Working Group for Healthcare, which recently announced a set of guidelines for such communication.
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2003
March 2003
The American Association of Diabetes Educators (AADE) has developed a new resource for diabetes educators who want to spice up their patient and community group presentations.
0 comments - Posted Mar 1, 2003
February 2003
Death rates are lower among people new to oral anti-diabetes medications if they take either metformin alone or metformin in combination with a sulfonylurea, as opposed to taking a sulfonylurea alone.
0 comments - Posted Feb 1, 2003
Q: I was wondering whether you could have someone discuss "type 1.5." I am especially interested in how diabetes "type" and C-peptide numbers are related. I was 28 when I first started having symptoms of diabetes (thirst, weight loss, fatigue). Two years later, I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. After a year or two, some confusion arose about what type of diabetes I had. (I needed a rather low total daily insulin dose of 25 units for my weight of 140.) A C-peptide test was run. My blood sugars were kind of high at the time, and the C-peptide came back as 0.2. The doctor told me I was definitely type 1. I am still requiring rather low doses of insulin (a daily total of 30 units for a weight of 170).
0 comments - Posted Feb 1, 2003
December 2002
Eli Lilly and Company of Indianapolis, Indiana, and Amylin Pharmaceuticals of San Diego, California, have formed a global agreement to collaborate on development and sale of a potential new treatment for type 2 diabetes.
0 comments - Posted Dec 1, 2002
Postmenopausal women who have diabetes and take oral diabetes medications or insulin are more likely to have acute, symptomatic urinary tract infections (UTIs) than women who don't have diabetes, women who manage their diabetes by lifestyle changes—or even women with untreated diabetes.
0 comments - Posted Dec 1, 2002
Receiving more of one's medical care from a board-certified endocrinologist, a diabetologist or a diabetes clinic equals delayed development of some diabetes complications, say researchers conducting the Pittsburgh Epidemiology of Complications Study. This study has followed 429 subjects with childhood-onset type 1 diabetes for a 10-year period, beginning in 1986.
0 comments - Posted Dec 1, 2002
November 2002
It's fortunate that Gillian Larner was at her 11-year-old son's bedside in the hospital after his surgery in May 2002.
1 comment - Posted Nov 1, 2002
A committee of experts from the American College of Endocrinology (ACE) and the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists (AACE) reports that as many as one in three Americans have Insulin Resistance Syndrome, or pre-diabetes - a condition that can lead to type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and stroke.
0 comments - Posted Nov 1, 2002
October 2002
As a nation, we are aging. By the age of 65, two-thirds of us take one or more medications a day—and a lot of us take as many as three.
0 comments - Posted Oct 1, 2002
As a nation, we are aging. By the age of 65, two-thirds of us take one or more medications a day-and a lot of us take as many as three.
0 comments - Posted Oct 1, 2002
August 2002
Once again, Diabetes Health has read through more than 2,500 abstracts of research presented at the American Diabetes Association's annual Scientific Sessions and selected a few of the more interesting ones to pass along to you as part of our annual "Research Extravaganza" feature.
0 comments - Posted Aug 1, 2002
Doctors specializing in internal medicine, including attending physicians and those in training, are less likely than primary care doctors to accept the seriousness of type 2 diabetes, value the need for good glucose control or believe that people with the disease need special training in diabetes self-care. These findings held regardless of the doctors' age, gender or level of training.
0 comments - Posted Aug 1, 2002
Saying "type 2 diabetes is not a ‘mild' form of diabetes," Sir George Alberti, president of the International Diabetes Federation, called for "more aggressive control of the whole blood-glucose profile."
0 comments - Posted Aug 1, 2002
July 2002
When Charles H. Raine III, MD, director of the Diabetes Control Center in Orangeburg, South Carolina, learned he had type 2 diabetes, he went straight to insulin as his preferred method of control.
0 comments - Posted Jul 1, 2002
Carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) might not be detected by standard testing methods in people with diabetes, according to researchers in the United States and Canada, who urge doctors to evaluate clinical symptoms.
0 comments - Posted Jul 1, 2002
When Charles H. Raine III, MD, director of the Diabetes Control Center in Orangeburg, South Carolina, learned he had type 2 diabetes, he went straight to insulin as his preferred method of control.
0 comments - Posted Jul 1, 2002
May 2002
It is important for every person with diabetes to find a doctor who suits his or her particular needs. For teenagers with diabetes, however, this is especially critical.
0 comments - Posted May 1, 2002
March 2002
Q: I am a 52-year-old person with type 1 diabetes who is at least 40 pounds overweight. I have tried many ways to lose the extra weight, but I can never seem to get my blood glucose under good enough control so that I don't have too many lows.
0 comments - Posted Mar 1, 2002
January 2002
When it comes to a textbook definition of what is best for a patient with type 2 diabetes, physicians will often go against conventional wisdom, according to a report in the September/October 2001 issue of Effective Clinical Practice.
0 comments - Posted Jan 1, 2002
You might be seeing a great pump doc now, even if you aren't using insulin pump therapy. An endocrinologist or diabetologist will suggest a pump if you meet the criteria for insulin pump therapy.
0 comments - Posted Jan 1, 2002
December 2001
Q: I am a diabetes educator, RD, and insulin-pump trainer. I have trained many patients on the pump (using Humalog) and have instructed them on eating soundly and exercising regularly.
0 comments - Posted Dec 1, 2001
November 2001
A study published in the September 13 issue of New England Journal of Medicine says that 90 percent of type 2 cases could be prevented if people exercised more, ate healthier food, stopped smoking and adopted other healthy behaviors.
0 comments - Posted Nov 1, 2001
September 2001
Retailers should not switch the brand of diabetes supplies without first informing patients or their healthcare providers, according a recent survey sponsored by Becton Dickinson (BD) of Franklin Lakes, New Jersey. The vast majority (90 percent) of doctors and nurses surveyed said that they don't approve if a retailer changes a syringe from a prescribed brand to a store brand without telling them or the user.
0 comments - Posted Sep 1, 2001
August 2001
After four years on dialysis, with no sign that he was nearing the top of the transplant waiting list, Moshe Tati decided to buy a kidney. This was easier than he had imagined. Several months previous, the name and telephone number of an organ broker had been passed, furtively, around his dialysis group. At the time, Moshe did not think he would use the telephone number. He thought he would wait.
1 comment - Posted Aug 1, 2001
July 2001
Kelly Van Horn, RD, CDE, of Sammamish, Washington, received the Creative Nutrition Education Award from the American Dietetic Association for her innovative product that teaches educators and their patients about nutrition.
0 comments - Posted Jul 1, 2001
June 2001
Carlos's HbA1c had been above 10.2% for the last three clinic visits. We were frustrated because he was 16 years old, had a great personality and knew a lot about diabetes management. Every time he came to clinic without his blood-sugar records, he would promise to bring them next time and also promised to get his HbA1c down. It was hard not to believe him because he was such a nice guy.
0 comments - Posted Jun 1, 2001
Scientists in Canada believe they have clinched the "Holy Grail" of the immune system: a gene that turns off the signal that triggers diabetes.
0 comments - Posted Jun 1, 2001
May 2001
The most recent statistics say 86,000 people with diabetes suffer from lower-limb amputations. Experts, however, say that half of them could be avoided.
0 comments - Posted May 1, 2001
April 2001
On December 29, 2001 the Health Care Finance Administration (HCFA) issued its long-awaited final ruling on how funding for diabetes education will be spent. The decision, a follow-up to its two-year-old proposed ruling, became effective on February 27, 2001.
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2001
For Kim Hanchette, MEd, CDE, keeping up with the diabetes Joneses has never been a problem. With the conclusion of the Diabetes Control and Complications Trial in 1993, Hanchette says most doctors in her hometown of Raleigh, North Carolina, had come to embrace the concept of self-management. As a CDE at an outpatient clinic there, Hanchette had her work cut out for her, with patients flowing in at a steady stream for classes on nutrition, glucose levels, exercise and medication.
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2001
February 2001
Children experience insulin resistance during puberty whether or not they will develop type 2 diabetes in adulthood, according to a new study by researchers in California and Alabama, who said changes were consistent across all subgroups of gender, ethnicity and obesity. Findings suggest the possibility of preventing type 2 diabetes during this phase of adolescence through dietary and physical activity intervention, says Michael I. Goran, PhD, of the University of Southern California. Dr. Goran and colleagues published their findings in the November 2001 issue of Diabetes.
0 comments - Posted Feb 1, 2001
December 2000
Even if the closure of diabetes programs can be halted, some diabetes professionals see a hidden danger that could make quality diabetes care hard to come by: a shortage of qualified educators and nurses. They say that, despite what looks like a shrinking job pond, good catches are becoming harder to find.
0 comments - Posted Dec 1, 2000
The Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) has yet to issue a final ruling on its standards for Medicare reimbursement. For many, however, the writing on the wall is clear: to qualify, it's the ADA's way or the highway.
0 comments - Posted Dec 1, 2000
October 2000
Many of you probably record your blood glucose in a diary or logbook, which you bring to your healthcare team on routine visits. This logbook has been an important component of diabetes treatment programs since the days of Dr. Elliot Joslin (Joslin Diabetes Center), the late pioneering diabetes specialist. Dr. Joslin believed important events in a person's life and diabetes treatment should be entered into a diary that both that person and his health care team could refer back to for treatment decisions.
0 comments - Posted Oct 1, 2000
People with type 2 diabetes are capable of increasing their physical activity levels, according to a recent survey of doctors in the United Kingdom.
0 comments - Posted Oct 1, 2000
September 2000
I recently went to hear yet another brilliant and well-known research physician speak to yet another lay audience about what is new in diabetes research, and why it's important for them to send more money.
0 comments - Posted Sep 1, 2000
The American Association of Diabetes Educators (AADE) is seeking passage of House Resolution (HR) 3003, which will add Certified Diabetes Educators (CDEs) as Medicare-certified providers for diabetes self-management education services.
0 comments - Posted Sep 1, 2000
June 2000
In a French survey of attitudes toward xenografts (transplants of animal organs in humans), it was found that people with type 1 diabetes were more in favor of xenografts than were a sample of the general population. Type 1s were also more receptive than the general population to the idea of receiving a pig xenograft. For the same reasons, type 1s were also more conscious of the risks of disease transmission inherent in such xenografts.
0 comments - Posted Jun 1, 2000
Jean Betschart MN, RN, CDE is a pediatric nurse practitioner in the Department of Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh. She has also written many books and articles for children with diabetes.
0 comments - Posted Jun 1, 2000
December 1999
Dr. David Matthews, chairman of the Oxford Center for Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism, says beta-cell deterioration is "virtually inevitable" in persons with type 2 diabetes. He urges doctors who treat type 2s to refrain from telling them that they only have "mild diabetes," and instead tell them that they are still at considerable risk for diabetic complications.
0 comments - Posted Dec 1, 1999
November 1999
Q: I thought that people with diabetes experience frequent urination only when their BGs are high. Is this incorrect? Could frequent urination even when a person has consistently normal BGs be an indication of another medical problem?
1 comment - Posted Nov 1, 1999
Dr. Ann Simpson and colleagues at the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia, have found a way to genetically engineer liver cells to mimic the insulin-secreting beta cells of the pancreas. The process, known as gene therapy, involves implanting the human insulin gene into liver cells, giving the cells the ability to synthesize, process and store insulin.
0 comments - Posted Nov 1, 1999
October 1999
How do diabetes nurse educators keep up on the latest information? First of all, they read Diabetes Health. That's what they tell us every year at the Annual Meeting and Educational Program for the American Association of Diabetes Educators (AADE). This year's convention, the 26th for the AADE, was held in Orlando, Florida.
0 comments - Posted Oct 1, 1999
The Case of Meyer K.
0 comments - Posted Oct 1, 1999
August 1999
Instead of a sugar-free diet, people with diabetes might do better on a hang-up-free diet.
0 comments - Posted Aug 1, 1999
Several years ago, I had a severe insulin reaction while vacationing in the mountains. This was the result of exercising a lot more than usual. Pharmacists often spend eight to 12 hours a day, six days a week behind the prescription counter. On vacation, however, with the combination of increase in exercise, altitude, less stress and changes in food patterns, I went into a convulsion around 3 a.m. My wife could not awake me, and I had forgotten to inform her that I had a Glucagon injection with me. I awoke just in time for her to tell me the paramedics were on the way. I drank orange juice, ate glucose tablets, used a tube of Insta-Glucose and scolded her for telephoning for help.
0 comments - Posted Aug 1, 1999
July 1999
Imagine if a free glucose meter showed up at your door. You'd be thrilled, right? Well, it happened to David Fogarty, but he wasn't thrilled. This Berkeley, California, father was fuming mad. Fogarty's HMO, Health Net, sent a free Precision Q.I.D. meter to his 11-year-old son, Lucas, and to all its other members with diabetes. The catch was, Health Net would soon stop covering strips for Lucas's One Touch Profile.
0 comments - Posted Jul 1, 1999
April 1999
B vitamins may prove to be more helpful than we thought they were. According to scientists, one B vitamin, niacin, also known as nicotinamide or B3, could even prevent type 1 diabetes.
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 1999
The American Diabetes Association (ADA) and other national health care groups are requesting that the United States government stress fruits and vegetables more strongly in its health care guidelines for Americans. They want the government to bring fruits and vegetables to the "core" of the American diet.
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 1999
March 1999
Exercise has always been prescribed as a companion therapy to insulin, drug, or diet therapy in individuals with type 1 and 2 diabetes, yet, in the past two decades, the importance of exercise has been reexamined time and time again.
0 comments - Posted Mar 1, 1999
November 1998
According to the August 1998 issue of Diabetologia, a study revealed that an increase in the intake of fiber has beneficial effects in preventing ketoacidosis in people with type 1 diabetes.
0 comments - Posted Nov 1, 1998
August 1998
It's impossible to pick out the "best" research, particularly when there is so much interesting scientific work to choose from. My choice of what to include in this report, while necessarily arbitrary, was guided by what seemed most interesting to me. So if you've been involved in a particular research project that I've omitted, please accept my apologies. Here are the new findings that I would like to share.
0 comments - Posted Aug 1, 1998
July 1998
The role that type 1 diabetes may or not play in the growth of kids with type 1 diabetes has been studied for some time. According to a study in the May issue of Diabetes Care, the timing of the pubertal growth is normal in type 1 children, but the magnitude of this growth is reduced in girls.
0 comments - Posted Jul 1, 1998
April 1998
Rachmiel Levine, MD, known as the "father of modern diabetes research," died of heart failure recently at the age of 87 in Boston. Levine is credited with demonstrating that insulin lowers BG by stimulating the transport of glucose into the cell. This discovery, known as the "Levine Effect" or the transport theory, introduced a new era of research in which scientists began to study the modification of cells by hormones.
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 1998
December 1997
The number of cases of type 1 diabetes occurring before age 15 might be greatly reduced by immunizing children with common pediatric vaccines at birth, rather than waiting until eight weeks of age, according to a new study from LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City and Classen Immunotherapies in Baltimore, Md.
0 comments - Posted Dec 1, 1997
Health Care Professional Calls to Save Insulin
0 comments - Posted Dec 1, 1997
October 1997
I recently visited the Golden Triangle of Central Europe (the cities of Vienna, Budapest and Prague) with seven friends. In the golden city of Prague I had the immense pleasure of meeting much of the staff at the Institute for Clinical and Experimental Medicine's Diabetes Clinic, the Klinika Diabetologie. Everyone I met in Prague exuded such hospitality and such a optimistic outlook for these changing times in this historical city. The staff at the Klinika was no exception.
0 comments - Posted Oct 1, 1997
September 1997
The following is the behavior change protocol presented by Funnell and Anderson. These questions are intended to be asked of patients by health care professionals, but they can be used individually and can be helpful to keep in mind when trying to make significant lifestyle changes.
0 comments - Posted Sep 1, 1997
No one can "get" people with diabetes to do anything. If change is needed, it must be inspired and directed by the individual if it is to be truly effective.
0 comments - Posted Sep 1, 1997
August 1997
Metformin and troglitazone were both shown to improve glycemic control of type 2 diabetes. In addition, using them in combination proved to be safe and to provide additional benefit.
0 comments - Posted Aug 1, 1997
July 1997
Adam Greiner's story as told to DIABETES HEALTH by his mother, Barbara Greiner-Read, RN, CDE from the Valley Health System in Hemet, Calif.
0 comments - Posted Jul 1, 1997
June 1997
Warning: Read at your own risk. The following case study is a true story about one person's fatal encounter with diabetes and may not be suitable for all readers. While the information is unpleasant we feel that it provides a valuable lesson. Most of our case studies have been success stories in the past, but Dr. Marcus and DIABETES HEALTH feel that the information herein can help to save lives.
0 comments - Posted Jun 1, 1997
November 1996
When a child is born with or develops a chronic illness, such as diabetes, no one turns to the parents and says, "Be careful! Your marriage is now at risk." Yet, it is true. Despite the parents' deep love for their child and for each other, long-term issues of worry, fatigue and expense will, inevitably, put a great strain on their relationship.
0 comments - Posted Nov 1, 1996
July 1996
People with diabetes who have trouble keeping their HbA1c levels down often have complex psychosocial problems within their families. A recent study, led by Christina Preis, showed that a diabetes education program which focuses on family therapy can help lower HbA1c levels and reduce the risk of severe hypoglycemic episodes.
0 comments - Posted Jul 1, 1996
A new study shows that providing physicians with glycated hemoglobin readings during patient visits can improve glycemic control in those patients.
0 comments - Posted Jul 1, 1996
Controversial new research linking the timing of vaccinations to type 1 diabetes has recently captured the attention of federal health officials.
0 comments - Posted Jul 1, 1996
June 1996
A new line of frozen dinners specifically designed for people with diabetes is now available.
2 comments - Posted Jun 1, 1996
Not satisfied just working 40 hours a week in diabetes care, Eva Bradley, RN, BSN, CDE, designed a remarkable new exercise routine for people with diabetes in her spare time. The program, which Eva calls "Spiritualcise," combines the physical needs of self-care with the emotional needs of self-esteem.
0 comments - Posted Jun 1, 1996
In caring for diabetes, the important role of emotions is often overlooked. It's so much easier to deal with a patient's physiology than to deal with the patient's feelings.
1 comment - Posted Jun 1, 1996
May 1996
Type 1 diabetes may be linked to the timing of child immunization, according to a new study done by Classen Immunotherapies.
0 comments - Posted May 1, 1996
February 1996
Forget the uptight approach to diabetes management. When patients come to Rhonda Howard, RD, CDE, at the Humphreys Diabetes Center in Boise, Idaho, they are taught to trust their bodies instead of fight them.
0 comments - Posted Feb 1, 1996
When you have a hypoglycemic incident, does it usually catch you by surprise? Probably-hypoglycemic symptoms are not always easy to recognize. For example, you more than likely have had hypoglycemic episodes when you just did not feel as many warning symptoms as you usually do. You may also have had episodes when you felt symptoms, but thought they were caused by something other than your blood glucose. If symptoms can be so hard to recognize, what can you do to improve your ability to tell when your blood glucose is too high or too low?
0 comments - Posted Feb 1, 1996
December 1995
Managing the only diabetes facility of its kind in the state of Kentucky is not an easy job, but Liz Grabowski, RN, CDE, MSN, ARNP, loves it.
0 comments - Posted Dec 1, 1995
November 1995
Earline Edwards, RN, of Omaha, Neb. recently published a report called "Diabetes Care in the Schools: A Challenge for the Diabetes Educator." Information in her report supports Cynthia Halvorsen's contentions about the treatment her son has received in school.
0 comments - Posted Nov 1, 1995
October 1995
How many times have you skipped a blood sugar test because you didn't want to waste a meter strip?
0 comments - Posted Oct 1, 1995
September 1995
The causes of diabetic complications are not yet completely understood, but there are some strong suspicions about certain changes in tissues and organs. It seems almost undeniable (especially after the recent DCCT) that hyperglycemia plays a major role in triggering the mechanisms that ultimately lead to diabetic complications. Two of the suspected mechanisms are osmotic effects from the hyperglycemia itself and glycosylation (glucose sticking to other molecules) of various important proteins-like hemoglobin, and the tissues of the eye, kidney, nerve, and blood vessels. Also suspected is the accelerated action of some enzyme systems when they are fed by extra glucose.
0 comments - Posted Sep 1, 1995
July 1995
Physicians are invited to attend one of the MiniMed Insulin Pump Therapy Symposia being offered around the United States. Four symposia are scheduled during the next several months. They will take place in Seattle, Rochester, N.Y., Little Rock, Ark., and Houston.
0 comments - Posted Jul 1, 1995
Eileen Corkery started her career as a visiting nurse, bringing healthcare into peoples' homes. Fifteen years later, she's still educating, but now people come to her.
0 comments - Posted Jul 1, 1995
Several prominent endocrinologists gathered in San Diego this past January to develop guidelines for prescribing metformin. Speaking at the American Diabetes Association Post-Graduate course were: Alan J. Garber, MD, PhD, of Houston's Baylor College of Medicine; Ralph A. DeFronzo, MD, Chief of the Diabetes Division of the University of Texas Health Center in San Antonio; and Jay S. Skyler, MD of Miami.
0 comments - Posted Jul 1, 1995
Most doctors are trained to control patients' medical problems. When doctors take charge of diabetes, they often try to direct their patients in the same way parents do their children. When patients don't do what they are told, doctors often label them "non-compliant." Bob Anderson, EdD, views this as "a health care professional's term for disobedience."
0 comments - Posted Jul 1, 1995
June 1995
Harriet Black knows why she's a diabetes educator.
0 comments - Posted Jun 1, 1995
April 1995
Jean Oswald Konrady, RN, a diabetes educator at Sarasota Memorial Hospital in Sarasota, Fla., died in August. She was 43 when she lost her battle with breast cancer.
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 1995
February 1995
Nomination Letter:
It is our great pleasure to recommend our colleague, Laurinda Poirier, MPH, RN, CDE, Director of Clinical and Educational Services here at the Joslin Diabetes Center, for your "Educator of the Month.
0 comments - Posted Feb 1, 1995
December 1994
Martha Teter, RN, M. Ed., CDE was selected as the Diabetes Educator for Western Ohio in 1991, and is a member of the Dayton Area Diabetes Association. She is presently the coordinator of the Diabetes Education program at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Fairborn, Ohio.
0 comments - Posted Dec 1, 1994
November 1994
As many as 40.2 percent of women with type I diabetes between the ages of 15 and 30 intentionally take less insulin than they need. This is according to a study that took place at Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston and was published in Diabetes Care (October 1994).
0 comments - Posted Nov 1, 1994
October 1994
Phyllis Furst, RN, MA, CDE is a diabetes nurse educator in Long Island, New York. She is the Diabetes Education Director at the Endocrinology and Diabetes Associates of Long Island in Rockville Center, a 3 physician diabetes and endocrinology practice, and has had type I diabetes for 22 years.
0 comments - Posted Oct 1, 1994
September 1994
Q: Recently I read an article in Post Graduate Medicine ("Effective Insulin Use," Vol. 95, No. 8, June 1994, pgs. 52, 54, 58-60, 63-64, and 67). The article suggests the patient not eat if the blood glucose is greater than 150 mg/dl. I would appreciate you reading this article and giving me your opinion.
1 comment - Posted Sep 1, 1994
August 1994
Evelyne Fleury-Milfort, RN, MSN, CDE, FNP, is a diabetes nurse educator in Los Angeles, California. She works at the University of Southern California University Hospital and at a low-income clinic.
0 comments - Posted Aug 1, 1994
June 1994
The letters we received in response to Joan Hoover's article "The DCCT Offers Nothing to Diabetic Patients" were surprising in a number of ways. Firstly, they were primarily from health professionals: doctors, researchers, nurses. Secondly, almost all of them were opposing Ms. Hoover's viewpoint. We are printing the letters (some have been edited for length) because such a response deserves consideration, but also because the letters touch on many of the reasons behind the DCCT study. Also interesting is that each letter has a different view on the DCCT.
0 comments - Posted Jun 1, 1994
Susan Thom, RD, LD, CDE, is a dietician and diabetes educator in Cleveland, Ohio. She runs a private practice called Diabetes Associates with her partner, an RN, and is involved in many local programs as well as national ones. Susan Thom is also the incoming president of the American Association of Diabetes Educators (AADE).
0 comments - Posted Jun 1, 1994
A study from Odense University, in Odense, Denmark, investigating suicides among men with IDDM has discovered that the suicide rate is higher than expected (March, 1994, Diabetes Care).
19 comments - Posted Jun 1, 1994
April 1994
(Excerpt from "DCCT Report Proposes that Diabetic Patients Try Harder" by Joan Hoover ©6/93.)
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 1994
Dr. Alan Marcus is a diabetes specialist who practices in Laguna Hills, California. He is a medical advisor to MiniMed Technologies, a spokesperson for Novo Nordisk, and an Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine at the USC School of Medicine.
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 1994
Margaret J. Wilkman, RN, CDE, is a clinical nurse specialist at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina. She is part of a consulting team, consisting of an endocrine specialist, a dietitian, and a clinical nurse specialist, that sees patients with diabetes who were admitted to the hospital for reasons other than diabetes.
0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 1994
December 1993
In Tonga, a small island kingdom in the South Pacific with a population of about 100,000 people, girth is a sign of success. Western-style medical care tends to be utilized only for illnesses related to the West, and hospitals are viewed as places for people with life threatening illnesses; as many as 70% of the patients go there to die. These insights gained by Ruth Breitenbach, a nurse and diabetes educator at Redwood City Kaiser in California, and her colleague Donna Wright, MA, RN, have helped them pioneer a successful, culturally sensitive diabetes education program aimed at the Tongan population in Redwood City. Tongan-Americans comprise a large percentage of the patients treated for diabetes there.
0 comments - Posted Dec 1, 1993
July 1993
We contacted Suzanne Strowig, MSN, RN, CDE, of the University of Texas in Dallas, in a phone interview regarding the recently completed Diabetes Control and Complications Trials (DCCT). Suzanne was the Trial Coordinator for the Texas area which included 22 people.
0 comments - Posted Jul 1, 1993