Diabetes
Diabetes Raises Risk of Death in Cancer Surgery Patients
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People with diabetes who undergo cancer surgery are more likely to die in the month following their operations than those who have cancer but not diabetes, an analysis by Johns Hopkins researchers suggests.
The study, to be published in the April issue of the journal Diabetes Care, finds that newly diagnosed cancer patients — particularly those with colorectal or esophageal tumors — who also have Type 2 diabetes have a 50 percent greater risk of death following surgery. Roughly 20 million Americans — about 7 percent of the population — are believed to have diabetes and the numbers continue to grow.
“Diabetic patients, their oncologists and their surgeons should be aware of the increased risk when they have cancer surgery,” says Hsin-Chieh “Jessica” Yeh, Ph.D., assistant professor of general internal medicine and epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and one of the study’s leaders. “Care of diabetes before, during and after surgery is very important. It should be part of the preoperative discussion.
Big first trimester weight gain ups diabetes risk
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Women who gain weight too quickly during the first three months of pregnancy are more prone to develop pregnancy-related diabetes, new research shows.
“We found the association was stronger among women who were overweight at the start of pregnancy,” Dr. Monique M. Hedderson of Kaiser Permanente Medical Group in Oakland, California, noted in an email to Reuters Health.
This study, she added, suggests that weight gain in early pregnancy may be a modifiable risk factor for pregnancy-related, or “gestational,” diabetes.
Obesity and Diabetes–The Missing Link?
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As some of you may recall from an earlier post here, inflammation appears to be a common link in the body between obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. There are substances in the body called pro-inflammatory cytokines that, as their name implies, promote the inflammatory process. This can be helpful when a foreign organism such as a bacterium or virus is the target; however, sometimes things go awry and these same cytokines may involve themselves in an assault on healthy tissue.
It appears that fat cells may be one of the primary culprits here. The thinking is that the more fat cells you accumulate, the greater your inflammatory cytokine level will be. Inflammatory cytokines in turn have been shown to be a risk factor for coronary heart disease (by promoting the development of plaque in the walls of the coronary arteries) as well as for diabetes. In the latter, it seems that they bind to insulin receptors on cells, blocking the action of insulin.
A DNA Link between Diabetes and Obesity
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There is no known reason for what causes diabetes. There are certainly risk factors that make the likelihood of you being diagnosed with the disease higher. One of the only risk factors that you have control over is your weight. If you are obese, the single best thing you can do for your health and the prevention of diabetes is to lose weight. Even in small increments, when you shed pounds you are increasing your health benefits.
These may be easier said than done. There are new studies that are now showing that there is a genetic factor or mutation for people who are obese and have diabetes. This genetic malfunction affects how the bodies use energy and insulin two key elements in the functioning of your body and the cause of diabetes and obesity.
The studies also state that this is not a cause and effect case. If you carry this defective gene you are not guaranteed to be obese or have diabetes. But the link is there and it can be prevented.
Obesity and Diabetes
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The health dangers of severe obesity are well documented and can researched everywhere from the internet. Words like globesity and diabesity are evidence that show of the growing impact of the body-fat disease. Moreover this statistics also show that severely obese patients only have little chance of opportunity to losing weight using conventional diets. But, this does not mean that the surgery or treatment will be a solution for obesity. Long term studies have show that patients have fail to maintain any significant weight loss, and many patients regain all the weight they lose.
Always keep in mind that the weight loss surgery must be taken serious undertaking. You should clearly understand the pros and cons associated with the procedures before making a decision Patients who have realistic expectations, a positive attitude and, above all, a genuine commitment to making lifelong changes in their attitude to food and exercise, typically achieve much better results.
Diabetes to exact huge costs on poor countries
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Diabetes and its complications - such as strokes and heart disease - will place an enormous financial burden on poorer countries in years to come, researchers warned in a report published Tuesday.
“Diabetes is moving from being a disease of developed countries to a disease in developing countries like India and China, and this could put pressure on healthcare systems through rising healthcare costs,” said Philip Clarke, associate professor at University of Sydney’s School of Public Health.
Clarke and his colleagues examined records of 11,140 patients with severe diabetes in 20 countries, including the complications they suffered, money spent and length of hospital stays.
Diabetes linked to birth defects, but obesity is not
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A study published in the medical journal Obstetrics & Gynecology has cleared obesity as a condition that causes birth defects, but the news was not so good for diabetics.
The 13 year study looked at the pregnancies of 41,902 women whose weight was at or near obesity to determine if extra pounds were indicative of increased incidence of birth defects. The results of the study showed that obesity in and of itself showed “no significant independent association between maternal obesity” and birth defects.
The study went on to conclude that “diabetes was significantly associated with the increase in the rate” of birth defects.
Early Artificial Pancreas Trials Show Benefits for Kids, Teenagers with Diabetes While Sleeping Over
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In a landmark study in children and teenagers with type 1 diabetes, JDRF-funded researchers at the University of Cambridge showed that using a first-generation artificial pancreas system overnight can lower the risk of low blood sugar emergencies while sleeping, and at the same time improve diabetes control.
Results from the studies are published in the February 5, 2010 issue of The Lancet, available online at http://www.thelancet.com.
The trials tested the safety and effectiveness of a first-generation artificial pancreas system used overnight in a hospital setting with participants between 5 and 18 years of age with type 1 diabetes. The system combined commercially available blood glucose sensors and insulin pumps, controlled by a sophisticated computer program that determined insulin dosage based on blood glucose levels while the participants slept.
Insulin pumps may be better than shots: report
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Pumps that deliver insulin to the body as needed may be more effective than insulin injections for helping people with type 1 diabetes keep their blood sugar under control, according to a new review of 23 studies comparing the two approaches.
But the analysis didn’t provide evidence on the risk of complications and the costs associated with the two approaches to managing type 1 diabetes.
In people with type 1 diabetes, known as juvenile diabetes even though it can strike people at any age, a person’s body loses the ability to secrete insulin. In order to survive and stay healthy, these individuals must monitor their blood sugar closely and give themselves injections of insulin as needed.
From biological basics to diabetes discovery
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In two major studies published in Nature Genetics today, researchers use biological understanding to dissect the genetics of diabetes. An international team comprising researchers from more than 100 institutions analysed vast suites of genetic data from more than 100,000 people of European descent to uncover the associations.
In the first study, the team identified ten novel genetic markers for biological traits underlying type 2 diabetes. In a companion paper the same consortium identified three new variants that are associated with raised levels of glucose seen in a common test for type 2 diabetes. The results help to unravel the complex biological story of type 2 diabetes: as well as revealing five new associations that influence directly the risk of diabetes, this research will drive studies to understand the biology of disease and to search for treatments to alleviate the burden caused by the disease.
The team are working to understand the normal metabolism of glucose as well as diseases of glucose metabolism, such as diabetes. They seek to uncover new genetic variants that are risk factors for the development of diabetes, as well as identifying genes that influence variation in the healthy range. Diabetes occurs when our bodies fail to produce sufficient insulin or when our cells fail to recognise and react to the insulin produced, resulting in abnormally high blood glucose or sugar levels.
Less sleep for kids may mean higher blood sugar
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Young children may be more apt to have high blood sugar, a precursor to diabetes, if they average 8 hours or less of sleep a night, report Chinese and American researchers.
This risk may be even greater among obese youngsters, Dr. Zhijie Yu, at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai and colleagues note in Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine.
Moreover, Yu said in an email to Reuters Health, shorter sleep seemed to influence blood sugar “independently of a large variety of risk factors,” such as age, gender, birth-related influences, early life feeding or later diet, recent illness, physical activity, body mass, and waist girth.
Race, obesity affect outcomes among diabetics following prostatectomy
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Obese white men who have both diabetes and prostate cancer have significantly worse outcomes following radical prostatectomy than do men without diabetes who undergo the same procedure, according to research from Duke University Medical Center appearing in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention.
Many studies have shown that diabetes is associated with a lower risk of developing prostate cancer—at least in white men—but the effect of diabetes on outcomes after prostate cancer surgery has not been as clear.
“We found that diabetes was significantly associated with more aggressive disease in obese white men and less aggressive disease for all other subsets of men in our study,” says Stephen Freedland, M.D., associate professor of urology and pathology at the Duke Prostate Center at Duke University and member of the Urology Section, Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Durham.
American Diabetes Association Statement Regarding Senate Passing Of Health Care Bill
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The American Diabetes Association issues the following statement about the passing of HR 3590 The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
“The passing of health reform in the Senate is a historic moment for our nation and for all people affected by diabetes,” commented George J. Huntley, Chair of the Board, American Diabetes Association. “People with diabetes have earned an important victory today because the Senate bill eliminates pre-existing condition exclusions, guarantees issue of insurance, prevents insurance companies from dropping someone because of illness, eliminates lifetime caps on benefits, limits out-of-pocket expenses, and provides subsidies to those who otherwise could not afford insurance.
Arizona State and Mayo Clinic Partner to Combat Metabolic Syndrome
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Arizona State University and Mayo Clinic in Arizona are joining forces in a partnership to investigate metabolic syndrome – a cluster of high-risk medical factors that include increased blood pressure, elevated insulin levels, excess body fat and abnormal cholesterol levels, which can lead to heart disease, stroke and diabetes.
Physicians, scientists and clinicians at the new ASU/Mayo Center for Metabolic and Vascular Biology will work together on solutions for this medical disorder. Research to better understand how insulin resistance affects the body’s blood vessels and metabolism will be an important part of the work at the new center, with facilities at the ASU Tempe campus and Mayo Clinic in Arizona, on the Scottsdale campus.
Lawrence Mandarino, Ph.D., a professor and founding director of the Center for Metabolic Biology at ASU, will direct the new joint venture.
New Type 1 Diabetes Research Center and Elam Discovery Wall Dedicated
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The La Jolla Institute for Allergy & Immunology, an international leader in immunology research and San Diego’s only research institute focused solely on immune-mediated diseases, today will dedicate its new Elam Discovery Wall and Type 1 Diabetes Center, which will focus on research into novel immunological-focused approaches to type 1 diabetes.
The discovery wall, a technologically advanced and visually stunning scientific research and education tool, is being dedicated in memory of William N. Elam, Jr., M.D., a longtime family physician and stepfather of Rancho Santa Fe resident and Institute friend Kevin Keller. During the dedication event, guests will be treated to powerful cellular images of type 1 diabetes activity via the Elam Discovery Wall, while speakers discuss the goals of the Institute’s new Center for type 1 diabetes research.
Led by Matthias von Herrath, M.D., one of the world’s top type 1 diabetes researchers and recipient of the American Diabetes Association’s prestigious 2008 Outstanding Scientific Achievement Award, the Center will accelerate research toward new therapies to better treat, prevent or cure type 1 diabetes.
