What's New In Health Screening?
New Frontiers In Detecting And Treating Diabetes
Posted Jan. 2009. Diabetes continues pose a major health and mortality problems: It is the most common cause of lipid (Cholesterol) disorder that causes heart attacks and strokes. After age of 40 two thirds of men and one half of women have the risk of developing heart attacks or strokes during their lifetime depending on risk factors such as diabetes. Diabetes is now epidemic, affecting over 25 million people in this country with 1.5 million new patients each year. This increase is attributed to environmental and lifestyle changes. This rapid increase in diabetes will be a major factor in increase lipid disorder leading to increase in heart attacks and strokes.
Investigators at Harvard Medical School claim that early detection before diabetes can actually become evident by rising blood sugar presents the best opportunity for treatment and prevention of lipid disorder and heart attacks. Pre-diabetic state is characterized by increased resistance to insulin and impaired tolerance for sugars years before the high blood sugar becomes evident. Investigators found treating some pre-diabetic patients with Glucophage will prevent the actual development of diabetes and lipid disorders that cause deadly heart attacks and strokes.
Pre-diabetes state is called impaired glucose tolerance or insulin resistance. Detection of impaired glucose tolerance is lengthy and cumbersome testing that requires multiple testing blood sugars over three hours time after ingestion of predetermined sample of sugar. This test is expensive, time consuming, inconvenient and not well tolerated by some patients. Recently investigators from Stanford and University of California published a simpler way to detect glucose intolerance and insulin resistance that causes increased risk of heart attacks and strokes. They found that the ratio of plasma triglycerides level divided by the plasma high-density cholesterol concentration of ratio of 3.5 or higher identify patients who are likely to be at risk of heart attacks or strokes without having glucose tolerance testing.
This is a new and important development of lipid (cholesterol) testing because cholesterol testing not only identify patients with high cholesterol that requires treatment, but also identify pre-diabetic state that require treatment to prevent the development of diabetes. It is recommended that all persons over age of 35 should test their lipid panel regularly to prevent future heart attacks strokes and diabetes.
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