Published in News
Many countries around the world are experiencing what can be described as a diabetes ‘epidemic’, with around 347 million people worldwide suffering from type 2 diabetes.
Type 2 diabetes is classified as having levels of haemoglobin A1c over 6.5%, and can lead to serious health issues such as heart disease, kidney failure and stroke. The American Diabetes Association classifies levels between 5.7% and 6.4% of haemoglobin A1c as ‘pre-diabetes’. In the United Kingdom alone 18 million adults can be placed in this category.A joint study by UCL and the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, US, published in the British Medical Journal, stated that the ‘pre-diabetes’ label had no clinical relevance. They argued that ‘pre-diabetes’ diagnosis leads to unnecessary medication, often using the same drugs that are used to treat diabetes to prevent or delay the condition. Professor John Yudkin of UCL, who led the research, said, “There is no proven benefit of giving diabetes treatment drugs to people in this category before they develop diabetes, particularly since many of them would not go on to develop diabetes anyway.” Ultimately, support and medication for ‘pre-diabetes’ patients could place a needless burden on health services.
However, others, including chief executive Barbara Young of Diabetes UK, argued that alerting people to their risk of diabetes is important as it may lead them to make lifestyle changes, such as more physical exercise or reducing the sugar in their diet. Barbara Young stated “healthcare professionals should support people who have a higher risk of Type 2 diabetes, whichever way this has been identified.”
Both sides of the debate agreed that the focus should be on a public health intervention to deal with the increasing number of diabetes patients, and the associated risk factors such as obesity and poor diet.