| Subject: |
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Medical experts stunned that low bG does NOT prevent heart attacks |
| Name: |
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Melody |
| Date Posted: |
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Feb 7, 08 - 2:40 PM |
| IP Address: |
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67.142.130.19 |
| Email: |
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otchmoson@hughes.net |
| Message: |
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Federal researchers announced today that they abruptly halted part of a major federal study of more than 10,000 middle-aged and older people with type 2 diabetes. The reason was that a treatment that most experts have long believed would save lives, lowering blood sugar to near normal levels, instead increased the risk of death.
For decades, researchers have thought that if people with diabetes could lower their blood sugar to normal levels, they would no longer have a high risk of dying from heart disease. The results of the new study showed just the opposite, and call into question how the disease, which affects 21 million Americans, should be managed.
There were 54 additional deaths among study participants who were randomly assigned to get their blood sugar levels to nearly normal as compared to those whose levels were controlled, but less rigidly. The patients had been in the study for an average of four years when the investigators called a halt to the intensive blood sugar lowering and told all the patients to follow the less intense regimen.
The results do not mean that blood sugar is meaningless. And, in fact, lowered blood sugar can protect patients against kidney disease, blindness and amputations. But the findings inject an element of uncertainty into what has been dogma in the diabetes field — that the lower the blood sugar, the better, and that normal blood sugar levels will save lives.
Medical experts were stunned.
(story continues at: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/07/health/07diabetes.html?ref=health |
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