An estimated 300 000 Georgians, or nearly one in twelve, suffer from diabetes. Now, the government is taking measures to combat the incurable metabolic disorder.
On August 22, deputy Minister of Labor, Health and Social Affairs Davit Meskhishvili, joined by director of the National Diabetes Center Ramaz Kurashvili, held a press conference to announce the ministry’s new information campaign.
The Health Ministry will be publishing magazines and brochures to better inform the country about diabetes, and promote healthy lifestyles to ward off type-2 diabetes. Georgians are at risk, says Meskhishvili, because of unhealthy diets and lifestyles.
“This disease is not only widespread in Georgia, but in developed countries as well. Someone dies from diabetes every five seconds,” Meskhishvili told the Messenger.
Meskhishvili explains that the estimate of 300 000 diabetes sufferers in Georgia is a rough guess, as many afflicted Georgians don’t seek medical care.
The ministry will attack diabetes from the twin angles of prevention and treatment. Along with promoting a non-smoking, healthy lifestyle, the ministry will provide free insulin treatments to poor diabetes patients.
“For families below the poverty line which have someone sick with diabetes, the whole health care package will be free,” Meskhishvili declared.
Kurashvili, the National Diabetes Center director, told the Messenger there are a number of risk factors for diabetes.
“There are two risk factors: stable and unstable. Stable risk factors for diabetes are the color of skin. For instance, there is bigger risk in black and yellow-skinned people to get sick than for whites. If the person has a family history of diabetes, then there is also a chance that genetic predisposition will lead to getting sick. Diabetes risk also increases with the age,” Kurashvili says.
‘Instable factors,’ he adds, are unhealthy lifestyles which include tobacco, alcohol and too much food. High blood pressure, insomnia, fatigue and stress are all linked to diabetes, Kurashvili says. Educating those at risk for diabetes is crucial, he says. And he knows the condition’s effects.
“My parents are sick with diabetes. My father is 96 years old, and he has had diabetes for 15 years. My mother is 85, and has fought it for a long time as well,” Kurashvili told the Messenger, adding that with proper care, diabetes is manageable.
But to buy the necessary treatment and see doctors may cost more than many Georgians can afford, particularly pensioners. Although insulin shots will be available free, people with type-2 diabetes need saccharine, medicine and regular checks of their blood sugar level.
73-year-old Nina Obolashvili has had diabetes for five years, losing some weight and eyesight. When she was first diagnosed with diabetes, she went to the doctor for treatment, but the expense became too much for her family. She self-medicates now, and says it helps that she lives in a village, eats natural food and leads an active lifestyle.
“It’s good when you can afford doctors and regular health checks, but not everyone can, especially in the regions. My children provide me with medicine, and I get a check-up once a year,” Obolashvili told the Messenger.
Source: The Messenger
As medicine struggles to halt the nation’s diabetes epidemic, scientists have found a potential new weapon in the most unlikely place — the skeleton.
Bone cells, they discovered, generate a hormone that helps regulate the body’s metabolism. And the lack of that hormone appears to contribute to the development of diabetes.
The work, conducted in mice, has a long way to go before it could be used to help diabetics. But a previous study showed that the substance, called osteocalcin, is found in lower quantities in people with untreated type 2 diabetes, scientists said.
“One could hope and certainly we will test if it could be a treatment for type 2 diabetes,” said Dr. Gerard Karsenty, senior author of the paper in Cell magazine and chairman of the department of genetics and development at Columbia University Medical Center. “What makes osteocalcin attractive is that we all have?it in our bodies and we tolerate it very well.”
The study, which is the first to provide evidence for a skeletal hormone, is generating excitement among diabetes researchers. But they cautioned that it is only one of a number of substances that appear to interact to control blood sugar in the body, and scientists must learn much more before osteocalcin could be considered a medicine.
“It has opened up a new area” of research, said Dr. C. Ronald Kahn, head of obesity research at the Joslin Diabetes Center, who was not involved in the work. “But it’s so unexpected, it’s going to take a number of studies to figure out if this applies to humans.”
In type 2 diabetes, sugar can rise to dangerous levels in the blood because the body loses sensitivity to insulin and may eventually not produce enough insulin. The body needs insulin to move digested food into cells to fuel activities. About 20 million Americans have this type of diabetes, which can lead to serious complications or death if not properly treated.
Scientists have known for years that osteocalcin is produced by osteoblasts, cells that help build bone. But the Columbia researchers are the first to show that it is also an endocrine hormone — a substance that acts through the bloodstream to affect metabolism.
In their experiments, they inactivated mouse genes that produce osteocalcin. The osteocalcin-deficient mice grew abnormally fat and developed symptoms of diabetes, even when eating a normal diet. When the researchers gave the mice osteocalcin, the rodents’ blood sugar normalized. Presence of the hormone also prevented mice from gaining weight when they overate.
Karsenty said the hormone appears to work in multiple ways to counter diabetes: it increases the body’s production of the pancreatic cells that make insulin, it directly increases the secretion of insulin, it enhances the body’s sensitivity to insulin, and it reduces storage of fat. No drug on the market carries that kind of punch.
Kahn called that multiple effect “particularly striking” and one of the goals for any new treatment. But another specialist, Dr. Michael A. Lazar, director of the Institute for Diabetes, Obesity, and Metabolism at the University of Pennsylvania, said two of those effects seem contradictory and raise questions that need to be explained.
Typically, he said, if the body becomes more sensitive to insulin, other mechanisms would kick in to shut off insulin production and vice versa. That makes it important to understand how osteocalcin interacts with other hormones as a next step, he said.
The diabetes specialists said that mice have proved to be a useful model for learning about human metabolism because of many similarities in genes, hormones, and functions. In this case, one of the genes that affects osteocalcin function in mice is not active in humans, but Karsenty said he believes there are other genes that serve the same purpose.
Karsenty, however, acknowledged “the possibility that osteocalcin function has been lost in evolution” and is not present in people.
The next steps, he said, are to study its effect in monkeys and then in humans over the next few years.
Karsenty’s group discovered the new bone-based hormone because they were looking for the symmetry that often exists in the body. They knew that most hormones are part of a feedback loop and that a fat cell hormone called leptin helps controls bone mass. So they searched for a corresponding bone hormone that controls fat, and found osteocalcin.
“As proof of the concept that the skeleton makes molecules that act as hormones, this is the first of its kind, convincing and interesting,” said Lazar. “It adds another candidate to the list . . . that could help us combat diabetes. But it’s premature to be giving osteocalcin injections at this time.”
Source: Boston Globe
Diabetes can be a killer, causing heart and vascular problems – and now scientists think they know why. Diabetics are likely to be deficient in thiamine (vitamin B1), and it is this that makes diabetes – both types I and II – such a serious condition.
Researchers from Warwick University have found that diabetics have a 75 per cent deficiency of thiamine in their blood plasma, a lack that has been missed by the standard blood test.
It’s not that diabetics are taking any less B1 in their diet than healthy individuals, it’s more to do with the fact that their diabetes is rapidly moving the thiamine from the blood and into the urine.
Low thiamine levels can cause problems in endothelial cells, which line the body’s entire circulatory system, and which can lead to an increased risk of atherosclerosis, or chronic inflammation of the artery walls.
Source: Diabetologia, 2007
Men, eat your whole grains. Especially if you’re middle-aged or older, and you want to decrease your risk of getting Type II diabetes.
Increasing your intake of whole grains will help, says a study in the issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
Eating whole grains might even help compensate for other risks. Obesity increases the risk of Type II diabetes, but men in the study who were obese but physically active and who also had a high intake of whole grains had a 52 percent lower risk of diabetes than did inactive obese men who did not eat many whole grains.
According to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, 17 million Americans have diabetes, and 5.9 million are as yet undiagnosed. Most have Type II diabetes, in which the body does not produce enough insulin or the body’s cells ignore the insulin.
Researchers speculate the high fiber content of the bran fraction of whole grains slows down gastric emptying, and thus slows down the release of glucose into the bloodstream. That, in turn, reduces the insulin response after meals and the risk of developing diabetes.
Whole grain foods also have more magnesium than refined grain foods, and that has been shown to improve the response of insulin, too.
“The insulin level in the blood tends to be more stable,” Fung says, “and it doesn’t peak as high, and that might have something to do with reducing the risk.”
As good as whole grains are, most Americans don’t eat nearly enough. Recommendations from the Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2000 suggest that several of the recommended six to 11 servings of grain per day be whole grains.
“About half of all grains [eaten] should be whole grains,” Fung says. Depending on a person’s size and caloric needs, that means at least three servings a day of whole grains, she says.
The new study provides reinforcement for what nutrition and diabetes experts have known for some time, says a certified diabetes educator at the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston.
“This is something we’ve known all along is a good thing,” says Karen Chalmers, director of nutrition at the center.
In addition to cutting your diabetes risk, whole grains fill you up and may make it easier to lose weight. “We stress fiber as a way to lose weight,” she says.
To boost whole grain intake, Fung suggests reading labels on food products and looking for ingredients such as “whole wheat,” or buying food products such as oatmeal, brown rice or whole grain pastas.
Source: paktribune.com
Pampered fat cats are three times more likely to develop the potentially fatal condition than cats of a normal weight, according to a study by the University of Edinburgh.
“The lifestyle of cats, just like their owners, is changing,” said Professor Danielle Gunn-Moore, from the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies.
“They are tending to eat too much, gain weight and take less exercise.”
Many cats are housebound because they live in flats or because their owners think it is too dangerous to let them out, she added.
“They have little to do all day but eat, sleep and gain weight,” she said. “Unfortunately, just like people, cats will overeat if they are offered too much tasty food, particularly if they are bored.”
One in 230 pet cats in Britain is diabetic, with male, neutered or overweight animals at greatest risk, the researchers said.
The number of diabetic cats in Britain is now nearly five times higher than the figure recorded in a similar U.S. study in the 1970s, the research found.
The study, published in the Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery, was based on an analysis of more than 14,000 cats and 760 questionnaires completed by owners.
Source: Reuters
Barbara Clark was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes nearly ten years ago. She remembers her initial symptoms well:
“I was tired. I was cranky. I was hungry and then not so hungry. I was thirsty all the time,” she said.
It took a while, but eventually she got her blood sugar–and her life–back in balance.
“I lost weight. I was able to regulate my diet much better. I wasn’t swinging from one food to another. I was able to do all the things I wasn’t able to do, I even was able to work better,” she said.
The problem is some people simply don’t respond traditional treatments.
Dr. Greg Gottschlich is part of a team conducting a research trial of a new medication which would work in a very different way than any of those currently on the market.
It has to do with enzymes, and hormones related to Type II diabetes, which means in the long run it might not help just balance blood sugar levels, but also help control complications.
“It’s exciting new class of medications to restore blood sugar levels by helping the body to better regulate hormone levels and blood sugar levels,” he said.
Patients take the pills daily for 20 weeks.
The drug is in its final phases of testing. Results of this trial are expected some time next year.
Source: 13wham.com
People with diabetes are far more likely to suffer from sexual problems and the anxiety and frustration that come as part of the territory. But you don’t have to suffer in silence.
Cialis, Viagra, and Levitra (vardenafil) are 3 major FDA approved medications that treats ED but there is no cure for this yet.
“I first noticed my erection problems about two years ago,” says Paul, 38, who has had Type 2 Diabetes for five years and needs to use insulin five times a day. “My partner and I have always enjoyed a loving and active sex life. At first I questioned our relationship. Did I still find her attractive? Had the relationship changed in some way? Through sheer process of elimination, I came to realise the problem was mechanical.”
Paul is one of half of all men with diabetes who experience erection problems or Erectile Dysfunction (ED) at some stage in their lives. ED is a common complication of diabetes and is caused by damage to the nerves in the penis – with your risk increasing as you get older. And unfortunately, ED often triggers anxiety and confusion, which makes matters even worse.
“In the past, I have never had any problems getting an erection. So it came as quite a surprise,” says Paul. “Luckily, my partner and I talk freely about everything and we were able to discuss the problem without too many inhibitions. I reassured her it was nothing to do with her and that I thought it was linked to my diabetes.”
He was right. Men with diabetes are three times more likely to experience ED, and unlike men who don’t have diabetes, over 80 per cent of cases are caused by physical rather than psychological factors.
Twenty five per cent of all women with diabetes and about 50 per cent of men will experience some kind of sexual problems or loss of sexual desire as a result of their condition, and like men, women with diabetes report significantly more problems with sexual dysfunction than women without diabetes.
Paul was lucky to be part of such an open and understanding relationship, as many couples shy away from talking about the problem due to embarrassment, frustration or feelings of guilt, especially if the cause is not understood. Research has shown that 30 per cent of men with diabetes don’t know that ED is a common complication, while almost half do know, but believe that ED is inevitable with age and that there is nothing they can do to prevent or treat it. Plus, a recent international study for the British Journal of Urology revealed that five per cent of men with erectile dysfunction also have undiagnosed diabetes - over 750,000 people in the UK currently have diabetes but don’t yet know it.
But for men with ED, there is no reason to suffer in silence, as effective treatment is readily available.
“I have a light-hearted relationship with my diabetes team so I didn’t have a problem speaking to them about it. The next time I was due for a doctor’s appointment, I told my GP about the erectile problems,” says Paul. “She was very helpful and gave me a list of the drugs available and I opted for Cialis.”
It didn’t take long for Paul to get used to the tablets. “I take one about half an hour before I think we might have sex,” he says. “More than 50 per cent of the time I can do without the tablets, but it’s good to know they are there as a back up. One tablet lasts for about 36 hours. I haven’t suffered any side effects and although it slightly takes the spontaneity away, our sex life is as active and healthy as ever.”
Source: Keep the Doctor Away, UK
A Missouri man who took the antibiotic Tequin is suing Bristol-Meyers Squibb and Schering Corporation for blood sugar problems he developed while taking the drug. Patrick Bills alleges that he developed both hyperglycemia and new onset diabetes while taking Tequin for a skin infection.
Tequin, a once-popular antibiotic, was introduced by Bristol Myers Squibb in 1999 to treat bacterial infections like pneumonia, bronchitis, urinary tract infections and sinusitis. By 2001, 3.3 million prescriptions were being written every year in the US for Tequin. It was that same year that researchers began noticing that Tequin could play havoc with blood sugar levels. Between April 2002 and March 2004, researchers at St. Michaels Hospital in Toronto followed 1.4 million patients aged 66 years and older. The researches found that 788 of those patients had to be treated for dangerously low or high blood sugar within 30 days of Tequin therapy. The research found that there was a four times greater risk of life-threatening blood sugar problems among patients treated with Tequin. When the Canadian study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2006, it found that previously-healthy Tequin users had a 17-percent higher chance of developing serious diabetes.
According to a press release issued by his attorneys, Bills began taking Tequin in 2005 for a skin infection. Shortly after, he began experiencing symptoms like extreme thirst, frequent urination and vision changes. In January 2006, Bills was diagnosed with sever hyperglycemia and diabetes. The lawsuit contends that Bills’ illnesses are a direct result of his treatment with Tequin. The suit claims that before taking the antibiotic, Bills had been healthy, and had not experienced any symptoms related to blood sugar problems.
The lawsuit alleges that Bristol-Meyers Squibb ignored mounting evidence of blood sugar problems related to Tequin. It wasn’t until February 2006 that, under pressure from the Food and Drug Administration, the company added a warning label that Tequin should not be taken by diabetics. But the company did not address potential problems for non-diabetics. In May 2006, Bristol-Meyers Squibb announced to its shareholders that it was taking Tequin off the market. Bills’ lawsuit charges that this move was made with little public fanfare, and that Tequin that had already been shipped was allowed to remain on pharmacy shelves. The complaint also alleges that physicians were not given adequate warning by the company and continued to write prescriptions for Tequin.
The lawsuit lists nine different counts against the pharmaceutical company and is seeking both compensatory and punitive damages for Bills.
Researchers have accomplished what might be a cure of type 1 diabetes — at least in mice — and they’re taking the first steps toward a human trial.Type 1 diabetes is the autoimmune form of the disease, affecting about five percent of diabetics. It usually emerges in childhood and occurs when the body’s immune system attacks insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas.
Now, a three-drug regimen that not only stops the destruction of beta cells but also preserves the function of cells that receive and metabolize insulin has eliminated type 1 diabetes in laboratory mice, said lead researcher Maria Koulmanda, director of nonhuman primate research at the Transplant Research Center, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
Her team published its report July 30 in this week’s online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“We stopped the progression of automimmunity. The animals could become normoglycemic,” meaning they had normal levels of blood sugar, Koulmanda said.
Another major discovery is that inflammation appears to play a major role in type 1 diabetes, she added. In fact, one drug used in the treatment regimen reduced the inflammation of cells that metabolize insulin.
“Basically, by blocking inflammation, we were getting the animals to be insulin-sensitive,” Koulmanda said.
Another drug successfully reduced the autoimmune destruction of beta cells, but that was not the key to reversing the disease, she said. Instead, success was linked to blocking inflammatory processes that impair cells’ responses to insulin.
Some of the cells involved in insulin metabolism were found to be resistant to insulin’s effects — a common phenomenon seen in much more common, adult-onset, obesity-linked type 2 diabetes, Koulmanda said. “This is the first time anyone has seen insulin-resistant cells in type 1 diabetes,” she noted.
A course of treatment lasting less than four weeks restored normal blood sugar function in the test mice. In contrast, mice that did not get the treatment died during that month-long period.
Based on these promising results, the first work need to s?art a human trial of the regimen are about to begin, said Dr. Terry B. Strom, director of the Transplant Research Center.
“We have tried something like this for monkey models,” he said. “The results have been very good.”
The next step will be tests to ensure that the regimen is safe for human use.
“We anticipate toxicology trials very soon,” Strom said. “We are making the proteins needed for those trials.”
The fact that success was achieved in the mice trials with a relatively short course of treatment indicates that, for humans, “one might be able to use relatively brief periods of treatment to restore normal function,” he said.
source: HealthDay News
Caraco Pharmaceutical Laboratories Ltd. said it received tentative approval from the United States Food and Drug Administration for the company’s Abbreviated New Drug Application for Repaglinide Tablets USP.
The Detroit-based generic drug company said Repaglinide works by lowering the blood glucose in patients with type 2 diabetes whose hyperglycemia can’t be controlled properly by diet and exercise alone.
Caraco, whose majority owner is Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. of Mumbai, India, said doses that were approved the by FDA were 0.5 mg, 1 mg and 2 mg tablets. The tentative approval is the bioequivalent to Prandin ®, registered trademark of Novo Nordisk Pharmaceuticals Inc.
“We are extremely pleased to receive this tentative approval,” said Daniel Movens, Caraco’s Chief Executive Officer in a statement. “We believe we have a first to file position on Repaglinide, which could result in 180-day marketing exclusivity. The product was filed with a Paragraph IV certification that we do not infringe and or that the Novo Nordisk patent is invalid. We are under current litigation with Novo Nordisk and expect a favorable conclusion.”