Tag Archives: glucose

Managing risk factors – the old offenders Diet An update on diet and cardiovascular disease was given by Professor Kay Tee Khaw (University of Cambridge). A surprise recent finding has been that increased body mass index (BMI) trends do not directly correlate with cardiovascular mortality, particularly in Mediterranean countries (figure 1). Figure 1. Body mass index and associated coronary heart disease in Europe. Panel a) body mass index; panel b) coronary heart disease This gives rise to the question: is diet a key moderating factor in the relationship between BMI and cardiovascular mortality? The PREDIMED (Effects of the Mediterranean Di

These findings are in line with those of the US ACCORD trial which was stopped early because of an increased risk of death in type 2 diabetes patients who underwent intensive blood glucose lowering compared with conventional therapy. In the new UK study, published recently in The Lancet (Lancet 2010;375:481–9), the lowest death and event rates were seen at an HbA1c level of 7.5%. The new data come from studying around 48,000 type 2 diabetes patients aged 50 or over who are included in the UK General Practice Research Database. These patients had either had their treatment intensified from oral monotherapy to combination therapy with oral bl

New data on intensive glucose lowering in type 2 diabetes The results of three large trials investigating the clinical effects of intensive glucose lowering in patients with type II diabetes were presented at the recent American Diabetes Association meeting in San Francisco, USA, and have shown somewhat conflicting results. The ACCORD (Action to Control Cardiovascular Risk in Diabetes) trial was stopped earlier this year because of an increased mortality in the intensive glucose lowering group. The two other trials – ADVANCE (Action in Diabetes and Vascular Disease – Preterax and Diamicron MR Controlled Evaluation) and VADT (Veteran’s A

The ACCORD (Action to Control Cardiovascular Risk in Diabetes) trial, conducted by the US National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), was stopped in February because the group being treated with intensive glucose lowering was showing a higher mortality rate than the group receiving standard treatment. But just days later, the group organising another similar trial, ADVANCE (Action in Diabetes and Vascular Disease: Preterax and Diamicron MR Controlled Evaluation), announced that preliminary results of their study did not confirm the adverse mortality trend with intensive treatment reported from the ACCORD study.