182012-01-05 19:42:2501/01/1970

It is well known that obesity, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease often go hand-in-hand. However, some teens who develop type 2 diabetes early in life may not realize that their diagnosis may begin to impact their heart function even before they reach adulthood.According to a recent study presented at the annual meeting of the Endocrine Society, teens with type 2 diabetes have a decreased ability to pump blood throughout their bodies during physical activity, compared to obese non-diabetic and healthy-weight adolescents."Past studies in adults with type 2 diabetes show that their heart and blood vessels' ability to adapt to exercise may be impaired. Our study shows that these changes in heart function may begin to happen very early after type 2 diabetes occurs," said the study's lead author, Teresa Pinto, MD.While the participants between the ages of 12 and 20 worked out on stationary bicycles, the researchers took MRI images of their heart and femoral artery, a large blood vessel in the leg that supplies the leg with blood, both during and immediately after the exercise task.The study's results showed that throughout physical activity, the hearts of subjects with type 2 diabetes did not fill up with as much blood as those of the teens who did not have the condition.Moreover, blood flow to the femoral artery was significantly less among participants with type 2 diabetes.The researchers said their findings indicated that type 2 diabetes may be a greater risk factor for developing cardiovascular disease later in life than excess weight alone.Although youths with type 2 diabetes may have a decreased ability to engage in exercise, building up stamina through moderate-intensity physical activity may help them shed extra pounds and control their blood sugar levels.

272011-12-30 19:30:2601/01/1970

Madison, Wisconsin - Although people from certain ethnic groups are at high risk for getting diabetes and should be screened, a new study suggests that such screenings are not being done as often as they should.Dr. Ann Sheehy, a hospitalist and clinical assistant professor of internal medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, was lead author of the findings, which will appear in the June edition of Diabetes Care.The American Diabetes Association (ADA) says that African-Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, Asian-Americans, and Pacific Islanders should be screened through fasting blood tests. The research gathered data from more than 15,000 patients between 2003 and 2007. All patients were insured and eligible for diabetes screening based on a number of ADA risk factors: 45 years or older, high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels, polycystic ovarian syndrome, obesity, heart disease, history of pre-diabetes and ethnicity.Sheehy and her colleagues at the University of Wisconsin Health Innovation Program say according to information obtained from the doctor visits of those in the study, more than 40 percent of minority patients should have been screened for diabetes based on their ethnic background, but were not."I believe there is a lack of awareness that minority status is an independent risk factor not only for having diabetes, but for complications with diabetes," she said. "Minorities get diabetes more often and tend to do worse when they have diabetes. I don't think providers are necessarily aware of this. There has also not been enough public and provider education about the increased risks minority patients face not only in getting diabetes but also to have complications with the disease. We hope the information learned in this study will help us care for these patients better."Sheehy said the research proves that increased screening efforts are needed for minority populations."Studies have previously shown that minority preventive care is less optimal due to a lack of health care insurance or lack of clinic visits," she said. "In this study, we wanted to look at the effect of minority status alone without the confounding effects of lack of insurance or lack of visits. That's why we only included patients with insurance and mandated at least one visit per year. So, we were really able to focus on the fact that insurance status and access to care were not factors in our findings. In fact, the minority patients in this study actually had significantly more primary care visits than our non-minority patients, so access to health care was clearly not a factor in our findings."Sheehy said it is possible primary care providers recommended diabetes screening for minorities, but those patients did not follow through on what needed to be done."Although we were unable to test for this possibility in the current study, it may be that minorities had unique barriers that prevented them from being able to return for fasting labs as frequently as other patients," she said. "Historically, a patient would come to clinic, the doctor ordered lab work to be done, and since diabetes screening used to require fasting, the patient would have to return another day after an overnight fast to get this done."Sheehy says new standards endorsed last year by the ADA that allow a non-fasting test to be done at the same time as the clinic visit may lead to increased diabetes screenings for minorities.  

352011-12-22 19:33:4201/01/1970

TUESDAY, June 21 (HealthDay News) -- The frequency of diabetic kidney disease has increased in line with rising rates of diabetes in the United States over the past two decades, a new study finds.About 40 percent of people with diabetes develop diabetic kidney disease (DKD), which is a leading cause of chronic kidney disease and accounts for nearly half of all new cases of kidney failure in the United States, according to background information in the study in the June 22/29 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.The researchers analyzed national data from the past two decades, and found that the prevalence of DKD in the U.S. population was 2.2 percent in 1988-94, 2.8 percent in 1999-2004 and 3.3 percent in 2005-08.The demographically adjusted increase in DKD prevalence was 18 percent from 1988-94 to 1999-2004 and 34 percent from 1988-94 to 2005-08.The estimated number of people with DKD in the United States at any given point in time increased from 3.9 million during 1988-94 to 5.5 million during 1999-2004 to 6.9 million during 2005-08.The researchers also found that the prevalence of impaired glomerular filtration rate (a measure of kidney function) among people with diabetes increased from 14.9 percent in 1988-94 to 17.7 percent in 2005-08."In conclusion, DKD has become more prevalent in the U.S. population over the last two decades and will likely contribute increasingly to health-care costs and mortality," wrote Dr. Ian H. de Boer, of the University of Washington, Seattle, and colleagues.Increasing use of medications to lower glucose levels and blood pressure haven't seemed to prevent diabetic kidney disease from increasing, he added.