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Early Insulin May Help Diabetics Avoid It Later
A short course of insulin therapy may help people newly diagnosed with type 2 diabetes avoid this therapy later. Reducing blood glucose quickly pays off in long run.

In type 2 diabetes, insulin production continues (unlike the situation in type 1 diabetes) but the body's response to the hormone is blunted. Standard drug treatment is aimed at increasing sensitivity to insulin, but in some cases extra insulin becomes necessary on an ongoing basis to ensure that glucose is processed properly.

The new findings, which appear in the medical journal Diabetes Care, are based on a study of 16 patients with newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes who were treated with intensive insulin therapy for 2 to 3 weeks. All of the subjects had high blood sugar levels when the study began.

This short-term therapy produced a marked improvement in sugar levels, lead author Dr. Edmond A. Ryan and colleagues, from the University of Alberta in Edmonton, note. Moreover, this improvement was still present one year later.

At 1-year follow-up, only one patient required insulin, while the rest were able to control their sugar levels with diet or pills. Predictors of good control with diet alone included requiring less insulin during the initial treatment phase, and having a lower sugar level at the end of that phase.

"The ease with which (normal sugar levels are) achieved on insulin may predict those patients who can later succeed in controlling glucose levels with attention to diet," the researchers conclude. "However, the numbers in this study were small, and the results need confirmation with larger studies before being considered as a routine clinical option." Diabetes Care, May 2004.
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FACT: A new study shows us that if you provide free test strips, people will test more often. Researchers from the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Manitoba in Canada studied 2 randomized groups, one paid for strips and one group was given free strips. The group that had free strips tested 2x daily and the other group tested 1.4X daily. The group that had to pay for the strips had their A1c’s go up, while the group that got free strips kept their A1c’s stable. Diabetic Medicine Feb. 2004

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