On the diabetes front the news is not good

May 29 2006

According to newly published study more than 73 million Americans, one-third of the adult population either already have diabetes and don't even know they have it or are well on the way to getting it.

Research has revealed that one in three Americans has diabetes or the precursors to it and it is on the rise with minorities groups twice as badly affected.

Researchers at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) say diabetes in America continues to rise.

While 19.3 million people had diabetes in 1999- 2002 the prevalence of undiagnosed diabetes has remained essentially stable since 1988-1994 at 2.8 percent, but the prevalence of diagnosed diabetes rose sharply during the same period, from 5.1 percent to 6.5 percent of the population.

Another 26 percent of Americans had impaired fasting glucose (IFG), a form of pre-diabetes.

In pre-diabetes, glucose levels are higher than normal, even though they are not yet high enough for a diagnosis of diabetes and pre-diabetes often leads to diabetes within 10 years, if steps are not taken to prevent it.

Lead researcher Dr. Catherine Cowie, Director of the Diabetes Epidemiology Program at NIDDK says that even though it is now known how type 2 diabetes can be prevented through lifestyle changes that include weight loss and increased physical activity, the disease rates are still climbing.

Cowie says more should be done to diagnose the one-in-three people with diabetes who don't know they have it, and the 26 percent of the adult population who have IFG.

Dr. Robert Rizza of the American Diabetes Association (ADA) says diabetes is a chronic and often debilitating disease that can cut short life and the fact that it is known how to prevent type 2 diabetes and there is still this kind of increase is devastating.

He believes not enough is being done to convince people they need to make changes in their lives.

The study compared data from the 1999-2002 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) to that of the 1988-1994 NHANES.

It found that minorities continue to suffer disproportionately, with prevalence rates nearly twice as high for African Americans and Mexican Americans as Caucasians.

Australian researchers have also revealed that complications with the disease are worse in teens with Type 2 than those with type 1 diabetes.

Lead researcher Dr. Maria Craig and team found youngsters who had type 2 diabetes developed significantly higher rates of high blood pressure, which can lead to heart disease, and microalbuminuria, an early sign of kidney disease.

The teens who developed type 2 were also more likely to be obese, which could be a factor in the development of these complications.

Teens with type 1 diabetes were more likely to develop retinopathy, damage to the blood vessels in the eye that can lead to blindness.

Another study has suggested that it may be necessary to lower cholesterol even further than previously believed in order to prevent heart attacks in people with type 2 diabetes.

More than 65 percent of people with diabetes die from heart disease or stroke and the American Diabetes Association recommends that people with diabetes lower their LDL cholesterol to below 100 mg/dl because of that increased risk.

The level is lower than that recommended for people who don't have diabetes (130 mg/dl).

Researchers from around the world have found that lowering LDL cholesterol to below 80 mg/dl with atorvastatin significantly lowers the risk of heart attack in people who have both diabetes and heart disease.

This study suggests that people who have both diabetes and heart disease should lower their LDL levels even further and found that patients who took 80 mg of atorvastatin lowered their LDL cholesterol levels to 77.0 mg/dl and reduced heart attacks 25 percent more than patients who took just 10 mg of atorvastatin and lowered their LDL levels to 98.6 mg/dl.

The study was conducted over a five-year period by researchers at the University of Glasgow, UK, the Heart Research Institute, Sydney, Australia, the Institut Pasteur, Lille, France, and American universities in California, Texas and New York.

The lead researcher was Dr. James Shepherd from the University of Glasgow.

The research is published in Diabetes Care by the American Diabetes Association and is the leading peer-reviewed journal of clinical research.