Diabetes News

Researchers at Western New England University have created a breathalyzer that may help control blood sugar by measuring the amount of acetone in the breath.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said that it is requiring the removal of the prescribing and dispensing restrictions for rosiglitazone medicines that were put in place in 2010.The agency said on Nov. 25 that it has determined that recent data for rosiglitazone-containing drugs, such as Avandia, Avandamet, Avandaryl, and generics, do not show an increased risk of heart attack compared to the standard type 2 diabetes medicines metformin and sulfonylurea.The FDA said this decision is based on its review of data from a large, long-term clinical trial and is supported by outside, expert re-evaluation of the data conducted by the Duke Clinical Research Institute.

A single overactive enzyme worsens the two core defects of diabetes—impaired insulin sensitivity and overproduction of glucose—suggesting that a drug targeting the enzyme could help correct both at once, according to mouse studies done by researchers at Columbia University Medical Center. The findings were published Nov. 21 in the online edition of Cell Metabolism.

Combining blood pressure–lowering drugs can cause serious side effects in patients with type 2 diabetes and moderately decreased kidney function, according to a late breaking poster, Combined Angiotensin Inhibition for Treatment of Diabetic Nephropathy: VA Nephron D (Abstract 5780), presented at the American Society of Nephrology's Kidney Week 2013.

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine say that, while a prevailing theory suggests elevated cellular levels of glucose ultimately result in diabetic kidney disease, the truth may, in fact, be quite the opposite. The findings could fundamentally change understanding of how diabetes-related diseases develop—and how they might be better treated, the study authors said.

Men and women with hypertension and men with diabetes are less likely to take their medications after retirement, according to a study in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

People with type 2 diabetes have a higher risk of developing breast and colon cancer, and they also have a higher chance of dying from the diseases, researchers reported at the European Cancer Congress in Amsterdam last weekend.

Researchers have developed a scoring system, called DiaRem, based on four readily available preoperative patient characteristics that can predict which candidates for gastric bypass surgery are likely to achieve type 2 diabetes remission within five years. A predictive model is likely to help patients and clinicians better manage the disease and could even save lives, the researchers said.

A genetic variant on chromosome 2 is strongly linked with kidney failure in diabetic women but not in men, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology. The findings may help explain gender-specific differences in kidney failure, as well as why some diabetic women are prone to develop kidney failure, the study authors said.

Among patients with diabetes, use of an outpatient electronic health record (EHR) in an integrated health care delivery system was associated with modest reductions in emergency department visits and hospitalizations, but was not associated with a change in office visit rates, according to a study in the Sept. 11 issue of JAMA.