The Earlier You Get Diabetes, The Worse it Will Get

People who develop type 2 diabetes when they're younger than 50 years of age are more likely to experience a worsening of their disease than those diagnosed at an older age.

Dr. Targ Elgzyri from Lund University, Malmo, Sweden, who presented the data, stated that, "The idea of the study came when we found, as previously shown, a progressive rise in HbA1c over time in newly diagnosed patients with type 2 diabetes despite different modes of therapy."

Unlike testing blood sugar levels, which gives a short-term picture of diabetes control, measuring blood levels of HbA1c, a biological marker for the disease, gives an idea of how well diabetes has been controlled over several months. Rising HbA1c levels, despite the use of different blood sugar-lowering drugs, suggests that the diabetes is getting worse.

With the current study, Elgzyri and colleagues looked for non-genetic factors that influence a continuous rise in HbA1c. The researchers followed more than 1,200 patients with type 2 diabetes for 7 years after their diagnosis.

HbA1c improved at 1 year following diagnosis, declining from 7.6 to 6.3 percent. During the subsequent 6 years, however, HbA1c increased from 6.3 to 7.0 percent, as expected.

The patients required insulin therapy after an average of 2.5 years, Elgzyri and colleagues report in a meeting abstract. After 7 years, 47 percent of study subjects were on insulin therapy.

The rise in HbA1c concentrations in subjects diagnosed before the age of 50 was related to an impaired ability of pancreas cells to produce insulin, the hormone that allows sugar to enter the body's cells and fuel the body's energy needs.

In a follow-up study, Elgzyri's group plans to test whether genetic factors can modify these relationships.

Source: Diabetes In Control: Presented in Copenhagen last Friday at the 42nd annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes.