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Minority Diabetes Reports
Wednesday, July 25th, 2012
Globalsaskatoon.com: David Giles, Global Saskatoon : Wednesday, July 18, 2012 3:59 PM
A new study by researchers at the University of Saskatchewan found First Nations girls in the province face higher rates of diabetes than other children.
Dr. Roland Dyck and Nathaniel Osgood tracked the rates of diabetes in both First Nations and non-First Nations populations.
Dyck and Osgood’s research uses Ministry of Health data from 1980 to 2005, the longest time period for any study on diabetes in Canada.
“When we look at the last 10-15 years, diabetes prevalence was quite similar between the two groups,” said Dyck.
“However, by being able to go back to the early 1980s, we found diabetes was only half as prevalent among First Nations children at that time.”
Dyck says the rates increased for pre-adolescent and adolescent First Nations girls over the 25 year period.
Diabetes prevalence more than tripled in First Nations youth from 1980 to 2005, with girls increasing almost four-fold.
“We believe what we are seeing in First Nations children is largely related to the emergence of type 2 diabetes while diabetes in non-First Nations children is still predominately type 1,” said Dyck. Read More
Posted by Staff
Minority Diabetes Reports
Wednesday, July 25th, 2012
By Stephanie Cary, Staff Writer: Posted: 07/17/2012 03:10:07 PM PDT.
For many, Mexican food is thought of as a treat, that delicious splurge that throws off your daily caloric intake leaving you feeling guilty.
But celebrity chef and certified nutritionist Chef LaLa is fighting that stigma as she creates healthy recipes without abandoning her Latino heritage and flavors.
The chef’s cookbooks “Latin Lover Lite” (Spencer Publications, 2004) and “Best Loved Mexican Cooking with Chef LaLa” (Publications International, 2008) are aimed at creating healthy ethnic cuisine.
But now she has taken it a step further by partnering with Merck, a global health care company, to launch Sazone Su Salud, an educational campaign designed to educate the Latino community about type 2 diabetes and to offer diabetes-friendly. Read more
Posted by Staff
Minority Diabetes Reports
Wednesday, July 25th, 2012
Deborah Busemeyer | For The New Mexican, Posted: Saturday, July 14, 2012.
When Karen Rencountre is at what she considers her ideal weight of 220 pounds, she is considered obese by national standards. She also has diabetes. But when she eats foods recommended to control the disease, her blood sugar level soars. She has spent a long time working to understand the apparent contradiction.
“I think there’s an assumption that people who are overweight eat too much,” she said. “But it could be the way their body responds to stress or trauma, or they don’t have access to food on a regular basis, or they haven’t learned the right foods for their body.”
To be healthy, the 26-year-old Rencountre said she had to shift her attention away from other people’s phobias about fat people and instead focus on the foods she eats and how her body functions as a result. Read More
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Clinical Trials
Wednesday, July 25th, 2012
Pediatrics.aappublications.org: July 23, 2012.
Optimal treatment decisions in children require sufficient evidence on the safety and efficacy of pharmaceuticals in pediatric patients. However, there is concern that not enough trials are conducted in children and that pediatric trials differ from those performed in adults. Our objective was to measure the prevalence of pediatric studies among clinical drug trials and compare trial characteristics and quality indicators between pediatric and adult drug trials.
METHODS: For conditions representing a high burden of pediatric disease, we identified all drug trials registered in ClinicalTrials.gov with start dates between 2006 and 2011 and tracked the resulting publications. We measured the proportion of pediatric trials and subjects for each condition and compared pediatric and adult trial characteristics and quality indicators. Read more
Posted by Staff
Clinical Trials
Wednesday, July 25th, 2012
N Engl J Med 2012; Jerry Avorn, M.D. July 19, 2012.
The history of medicine is largely the story of medicines — a continuing tale of unfolding risks and benefits. Yet the medical world into which the Journal was born in 1812 did not systematically assess the side effects of treatments in relation to the good they did. Often, there was no understanding of the causal linkage between adverse events and the therapies that led to them. The mixed bag that was the era’s pharmacopoeia is illustrated in the first article of the Journal‘s first issue, “Remarks on Angina Pectoris,” in which John Warren describes a patient with acute cardiac ischemia who “was ordered to take opium and aether, or the fetid gums; to bathe the feet in warm water; and under the direction of a physician, to lose a little blood. . . . The nitrate of silver was prescribed in solution.” Tobacco rounded out the regimen (1812; see Historical Journal Articles Cited). There was no systematic approach for determining which treatments could be effective with an acceptable level of risk and which were merely toxic. Read More
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Clinical Trials
Wednesday, July 25th, 2012
Diabetes Health: Jul 18, 2012.
Immediately starting intense therapy for newly diagnosed type 2s preserved their beta cell functioning for 3.5 years, according to a University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center study.
The researchers started with 67 patients who had never received medication specifically aimed at treating diabetes. The patients, all adults, averaged 45 years of age and were all members of non-white ethnic minorities. They had an average body mass index of 36 (obese) and an average A1C of 10.6%.
Of the initial group, 58 finished a three-month pre-study in which they received a combination insulin/metformin therapy. The pre-study doses of insulin and metformin were intended to ease the effects of glucotoxicity on the patients’ beta cells and prepare them for the subsequent experiment. (Glucotoxicity occurs when high blood sugar levels damage the insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas.)
At the end of the pre-study, the patients were divided into two groups: One continued receiving the insulin/metformin combination, while the second received a triple oral drug therapy that consisted of 1.25 mg of glyburide (a sulfonylurea) twice daily, 1,000 mg of metformin twice daily, and pioglitazone (brand name Actos). Read more
Posted by Staff
Clinical Trials
Wednesday, July 25th, 2012
Care.diabetesjournals.org: June 14, 2012.
Metabolic activation of the innate immune system governed by interleukin (IL)-1β contributes to β-cell failure in type 2 diabetes. Gevokizumab is a novel, human-engineered monoclonal anti–IL-1β antibody. We evaluated the safety and biological activity of gevokizumab in patients with type 2 diabetes.
RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS In a placebo-controlled, dose-escalation study, a total of 98 patients were randomly assigned to placebo (17 subjects) or gevokizumab (81 subjects) at increasing doses and dosing schedules. The primary objective of the study was to evaluate the safety profile of gevokizumab in type 2 diabetes. The secondary objectives were to assess pharmacokinetics for different dose levels, routes of administration, and regimens and to assess biological activity. Read More
