Search Box

Medical Guide

Medifocus.com,Inc.

Search This Blog

Thursday, May 29, 2008

Preventing Diabetes With Diet And Exercise

In a Diabetes Special Issue of The Lancet, researchers demonstrate that group-based lifestyle interventions of diet and exercise for a period of six years may prevent or delay diabetes for up to 14 years following the intervention. It is not clear, however, that lifestyle interventions also reduce the incidence of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and mortality.

There have been several major clinical trials in various countries that have demonstrated how people with impaired glucose tolerances can reduce their likelihood of diabetes due to lifestyle interventions. Researchers, though, still have questions regarding the length of time after intervention that the strategies remain effective. To investigate this issue, Professor Guangwei Li, (China-Japan Friendship Hospital, Beijing, China), Dr Ping Zhang (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, USA), and colleagues conducted the China Da Qing Diabetes Prevention Outcome Study (CDQDPOS) - analyzing 20 years of patient follow-up data.

The patients who participated in the study all had impaired glucose tolerance and came from 33 clinics in China. In 1986, the researchers randomly assigned the patients to one of three lifestyle intervention groups (diet, exercise, or diet and exercise) or to the control group. Over a period of six years (until 1992), the patients experienced active intervention, and a 2006 follow-up provided data that would be used to assess the interventions' long-term effects on main outcomes such as diabetes incidence, CVD incidence and mortality, and all-cause mortality.

During the active intervention period, the combined lifestyle intervention group had a 51% reduction in incidence of diabetes compared to participants in the control group. Over the whole 20-year period, this effect was reduced to 43%. Intervention participants had an average annual incidence of new diabetes diagnoses of 7%, compared an 11% rate for control participants. After 20 years, 80% of those in the intervention group had diabetes and 93% of the control group did; intervention group participants suffered 3.6 fewer years with the disease than control group participants. The researchers, however, did not find a significant difference between the intervention and control groups when measuring the rates of first CVD events, CVD mortality and all-cause mortality.

"This study has shown that, in Chinese people with impaired glucose tolerance, group-based interventions targeting lifestyle changes such as diet and exercise produce a durable and long-lasting reduction in incidence of type 2 diabetes...Since around 3 million excess deaths a year are attributable to diabetes worldwide, lifestyle interventions seem to be a justifiable public-health action both in developed and developing nations," conclude the authors.

Dr Jaana Lindström (National Public Health Institute, Helsinki and University of Helsinki, Finland) and Professor Matti Uusitupa (University of Kuopio, Finland) write in an accompanying editorial that, "We propose that lifestyle intervention should start much earlier, when people are normoglycaemic, to achieve true primary prevention of type 2 diabetes and its main consequence, cardiovascular disease. In this regard, both population-based strategies and those targeted at high-risk groups should be applied."

rate icon Editor's Choice
Main Category: Diabetes
Also Included In: Nutrition / Diet; Obesity / Weight Loss / Fitness
Article Date: 23 May 2008 - 0:00 PDT

Monday, May 26, 2008

81 recognized as suicide victims from overwork in 2007

TOKYO — A record of 81 people were recognized as suicide victims due to mental disorders from overwork. . more.

Saturday, May 24, 2008

Counseling Gaza's traumatized children



As George Bush concludes his trip to the Middle East in another effort to revive talks between Israeli and Palestinian leaders, Gaza, the small, overcrowded strip of land slides ever deeper into economic catastrophe. Another in The Guardian's film series about life in Gaza, multimedia reporter Clancy Chassay meets those counseling the area's traumatized children


Friday, May 16, 2008

India to America: Eat Less, Fatties


Fast food is on the rise in Bangalore, where the economy is booming

Uriel Sinai / Getty Images









Bush's wording was perhaps simplistic, a point U.S. diplomats have been at pains to rectify as they try to dampen the food fight between the two countries. But Bush was not completely wrong, either. There's no doubt that China and India's growing middle classes are consuming more and different types of food. As people get richer they tend to eat more meat and dairy products, for instance, and that's exactly what's happening in China and India. . read more


Thursday, May 8, 2008

Report Says Basic Medical Care Could Save Lives of 6 Million Children a Year


06 May 2008


A new report says the lives of millions of young children could be saved each year if basic medical care and medicine are made available to the poor. Douglas Bakshian has more from Manila.

The report by the U.S. organization Save the Children says about 10 million children die every year from easily preventable and treatable diseases. About six million of those could be saved with basic services. . . . read more



Monday, May 5, 2008

Malaysia plans women travel curbs

Page last updated at 11:57 GMT, Sunday, 4 May 2008 12:57 UK

Malaysian women walk through a shopping mall in Kuala Lumpur (file photo)
The proposal has been criticised as impractical and regress

Women's groups in Malaysia have reacted angrily to proposed government restrictions on women travelling abroad on their own.

State media say the plan would require women to obtain written consent from their families or employers.

The Malaysian foreign minister said the move would prevent single women being used by gangs to smuggle drugs.

The proposal follows a review of criminal cases where women had been jailed abroad.

Outrage

Foreign Minister Rais Yatim said 90% of cases where Malaysian women had been jailed by foreign courts involved drugs.

He told the New Sunday Times newspaper that a compulsory letter of consent to travel alone would enable women's families to make sure they were not being tricked by drug smuggling gangs.

"Many of these women (who travel alone) leave the country on the pretext of work or attending courses and seminars," he said.

"With this declaration, we will know for sure where and for what she is travelling overseas," he said.

Women's groups have expressed outrage at the plan.

The National Council for Women's Organisations said it would infringe women's rights.

Another group, Sisters in Islam, said the proposal was totally ridiculous and regressive, and assumed that women were less capable than men of making their own decisions.

Campaigners have pointed out that letters of permission to travel would be very easy to forge.

In recent years the influence of hardline Islamic groups has been increasing in Malaysia, but it is unclear whether this proposal has any religious motive.



Friday, May 2, 2008

A Blood Test To Predict Menopause


That's what scientists in the Netherlands have done. Reporting in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, they report that a simple blood test, for a hormone called anti-Mullerian hormone (AMH), could help women predict when they will enter menopause, and therefore how to set their fertility timetable. "Predicting menopause itself might not be that interesting," admits Dr. Jeroen van Disseldorp, lead author of the study and a fertility specialist at University Medical Center Utrecht. "But menopause is associated with fertility. So, predicting menopause might become more and more important in the future as women continue to delay childbearing." . . . . . read more



Search Box