Letter From The Editor

This week Steve finishes up his Homerun Slides on the Cost-Effectiveness of Treatment Strategies for Comorbid Diabetes and Dyslipidemia, by showing how Shared Medical Appointments can actually improve care. SMA’s definitely are the way of the future and this week we continue our report on how you can get them …

This week’s lead article about the use of pioglitazone to prevent the onset of diabetes in high risk patients has lead researcher Ralph DeFronzo, MD, very excited and he even went on to say “It’s a blockbuster study.” However not everyone agrees with Dr. DeFronzo. Timothy S. Harlan, MD, medical …

In 1970, the group Five Man Electrical Band released the hit single, “Signs,” and in it there is a line, “Do This, Don’t Do That, Can’t You Read The Sign?” It seems that when it comes to food choices for diabetes patients the line should be, “Eat This, Don’t Eat …

I spent five days last week flying and saw a lot of bags on luggage carrousels. People did some amusing things to make their bags easier to spot. There were red ribbons, fluorescent green straps and even one bag wrapped in a big pink outer cover with the words “Granny …

According to almost every clinician I talk to, it is becoming harder and harder to have enough time with our patients and get reimbursed for it. This is especially true for diabetes patients and is bound to get worse as patients only want to come one time to get help …

Are we starting to pay more attention to the challenges our diabetes patients face each and every day? This week Novo released a study showing the value of their three times a week insulin and how it compares favorably to once a day dosing (Item #7, Study Finds Three Times-a-Week …

Last week I was working on a presentation for the ASCP mid-year meeting and needed some up-to-date graphs on the incidence of diabetes in the US. Our publisher, Steve Freed, came across the CDC 2011 diabetes report and it was exactly the data I needed. He has put together this …

Our first item, Predicting Diabetes: Using the Fasting Glucose, A1c, or OGTT, this week looks at the best way to diagnose diabetes and our last item, Millions Risk Early Death Due to Diabetes Diagnosed or Treated Improperly, discusses the risk of early death in patients not diagnosed and treated soon enough. These …

This week we have more ideas on how to treat the two most common forms of neuropathy: diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN) and diabetic autonomic neuropathy (DAN) from the ADA/PDR: Medications for the Treatment of Diabetes. Our popular Homerun Slides series on GLP-1 agonists and diabetes finishes up with Incretins, Part …

Over the past couple of months I have received calls from three of my old insulin pump patients asking me to decrease their doses. These patients were all using over 400 units of insulin a day and were at least 100 pounds overweight. As I was talking to them it …