Changing to a healthier lifestyle appears to be at least as effective as taking prescription drugs in reducing the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes, says a new BMJ study conducted by researchers in the Department of Health Sciences at the University of Leicester.
Type 2 diabetes is a growing problem – in England around 1.3 million people have diabetes and around 5% of total NHS resources are used for the care of people with diabetes.
Researchers from the University of Leicester reviewed studies involving over 8000 people which measured the effects of different interventions – lifestyle, diabetes drugs and anti-obesity drugs – on people with impaired glucose tolerance (1). They found that lifestyle changes, e.g. switching to a healthier diet and increasing exercise to be at least as effective as taking prescription drugs. On average, lifestyle changes helped to reduce the risk of developing type 2 diabetes by around half. Lifestyle changes were also less likely to have adverse side-effects. However, the researchers say that both lifestyle changes and prescription drug taking must be sustained in order to prevent the development of Type 2 diabetes.
The authors say that as global rates of Type 2 diabetes are likely to double by 2030, interventions to prevent the condition will have an important role to play in future health policies. The study findings have large implications for public health policy, however, the authors note that if lifestyle changes are to be truly effective more needs to be done to support people to adopt healthier lifestyles.
This study forms part of a larger research project on Evidence Synthesis Methods for Public Health Policy Decision Making based within the Department of Health Sciences at the University of Leicester. It is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Medical Research Council (MRC) as part of their joint Public Health Initiative.
Professor Keith Abrams, one of the lead researchers on the project said:
‘This study shows that either adopting lifestyle changes or being prescribed appropriate medication for people with IGT significantly reduces the rate at which they will develop Type 2 diabetes. We are now investigating what the optimum screening strategy is for identifying people with IGT, and what the long term clinical and cost-effectiveness implications are of both screening and treatment.’
Babies whose mothers had diabetes during pregnancy may be less able to form early memories than children whose mothers had normal pregnancies, a US researcher said on Friday.
The study, presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco, suggests that babies deprived of oxygen and iron before birth are not as able to develop early memories.
The need for iron doubles during pregnancy because it is used to make blood cells for the fetus. In pregnant mothers with diabetes, fluctuating glucose levels can result in iron deficiency, which can reduce the blood’s capacity to carry oxygen.
“When oxygen and iron deficiencies occur prenatally, they alter the development of memory,” said Tracy DeBoer of the University of California Davis.
DeBoer studied infants of diabetic mothers at 12 months and again at age 3 1/2. Her study suggested that memory deficits that appeared at one year persisted into early childhood.
She did not specify which type of diabetes the mothers had, but type-1, type-2 and gestational diabetes all affect blood sugar levels.
In the older group, the babies were shown a series of nine objects in three levels of difficulty. In the highest level of difficulty, babies whose mothers had been diabetic during pregnancy on average could recall two fewer objects than those whose mothers had a normal pregnancy.
The finding was consistent with the deficits measured in a simpler test of infants at 12 months, she said.
The notion that babies could recall anything at all in the first two years of life is relatively new.
Researchers have long thought that childhood amnesia - the inability to remember early life - was because babies could not form memories, but researchers at the meeting said new studies suggested infants could recall things as early as four months of age.
Duke University researcher Patricia Bauer told the meeting new studies suggest that infants do form memories by late in the first year that are similar to adults, but “the rate of forgetting is faster than in adults.”
Memories from early childhood that survive this process of forgetting tend to be particularly meaningful, she added.