Diabetes Patients Fare Better When Side-Ailments Treated
Bloomberg News
February 18, 1999, 7:01 p.m. ET
London, Feb. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Diabetes sufferers fare
better when doctors tackle disease-related ailments along with
the disease itself, a new study shows.
A study found that treating diabetes sufferers for high
cholesterol, blood-sugar and blood pressure as well as putting
them on a low-fat diet, encouraging exercise and getting them to
stop smoking slowed development of kidney disease and eye and
nerve problems by about 50 percent compared with traditional
treatment. It also reduced blood-sugar and blood-pressure levels
and cholesterol significantly, researchers said.
The four-year study, published in this week's edition of The
Lancet medical journal, is the latest in a series of findings
that suggest doctors should be using an arsenal of treatments to
tackle side-ailments such as cholesterol, hypertension and
obesity -- all widespread problems for the world's millions of
diabetics.
Such studies are good news for companies such as Roche
Holding AG, the maker of new obesity pill Xenical, Zeneca Group
Plc and its hypertension drug Zestril, and Warner-Lambert Co. and
Merck & Co. with their respective anti-cholesterol drugs Lipitor
and Zocor. Demand for such products could broaden the diabetic
market, which is composed mostly of people who get the disorder
later in life and is already expected to triple in size to $7
billion by 2004.
Fattier Diets
Diabetes, a disorder characterized by the body's inability
to regulate blood-sugar levels, is claiming more victims as the
world's population ages, eats fattier diets and leads a more
sedentary life. In so-called Type 2 diabetes, the most common
form of the disease, the pancreas fails to produce an adequate
supply of insulin.
Insulin is the chemical messenger the body normally makes to
regulate how glucose, a key source of energy, gets to cells.
Patients with Type 2 diabetes often try to bring down the level
of glucose, or sugar, in the blood without insulin shots, by
relying on pills and changes in diet.
Last year at a diabetes meeting, a 20-year study pointed in
the same direction. The U.K. Prospective Diabetes Study found
that life-threatening diabetes complications such as heart and
kidney problems could be greatly reduced if doctors focused on
cutting patients' blood-pressure levels, as well as the amount of
sugar in the blood.
--Marthe Fourcade in the Paris newsroom (331) 5365 5065/ph
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