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Thread: U.S. Recalls 62 Million Diabetes Strips

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    U.S. Recalls 62 Million Diabetes Strips


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    New Devices to Battle Diabetes...

    Scientists Creating New Devices to Battle Diabetes
    April 07, 2016 - A DNA test under development aids in making diagnoses; an adhesive strip can monitor glucose levels and automatically deliver insulin via microneedles
    In general, people around the world are eating better and living longer, but they are also moving less. This is contributing to the rise of diabetes, a condition that affects 422 million people and is fast becoming a major problem, especially in poor countries. Two factors are critical for the successful treatment of diabetes patients. First is a correct diagnosis of the type of the disease, and second is the administration of the appropriate drugs.

    A misdiagnosis and, consequently, the wrong treatment can cause many problems. “If you label someone who actually has type 2 diabetes as type 1, they'll be left on insulin for the rest of their life when they don't need it," said Dr. Richard Oram of the U.K. National Institute for Health Research. "Even worse, if someone with type 1 diabetes is mislabeled as having type 2 diabetes, then they may not be treated with the insulin they need, and they may suffer life-threatening complications.”

    A new, less expensive test, developed at the University of Exeter Medical School, measures 30 genetic variants in the patient’s DNA and calculates the risk for type 1 or type 2. Individual diagnoses can be completed with a commonly used test for antibodies. Scientists are now trying to develop an even simpler DNA-based test that could be done with a smartphone app.

    No more injections?

    In the meantime, researchers in South Korea are developing a nanotechnology-based adhesive strip that takes away pain and stress of daily injections for diabetes patients. “The device is a patch type that enables [diabetics] to monitor blood sugar levels via sweat without taking blood samples and injections, as well as to control glucose levels by injecting medication,” said Kim Dae-hyeong, a professor in the School of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Seoul National University.

    The patch is studded with microneedles that painlessly enter subcutaneous tissue. When the connected chip senses that the level of glucose has risen above normal, a small heating element dissolves medication and releases it into the bloodstream. Tests done on lab mice were promising, so scientists hope they will soon start testing the patch on humans. In this phase, experiments are still expensive, but scientists say the price will drop once it the patch is ready for mass production.

    http://www.voanews.com/content/scien...s/3275283.html
    See also:

    WHO Calls on Governments to Combat Global Diabetes Surge
    April 06, 2016 — The World Health Organization reports 422 million adults are living with diabetes, a four-fold increase over 1980 figures.
    The release of this report in advance of World Health Day (April 7) is meant as a call to global action to halt the rise of type 2 diabetes, which is killing 1.5 million people a year. The World Health Organization estimates 43 percent of these deaths occur prematurely, before the age of 70. The U.N. agency says diabetes is no longer a disease of the wealthy. Most cases now are found in middle- and low-income countries. The WHO says the highest rates are in the Middle East, Southeast Asia and the western Pacific. The WHO report says the dramatic rise of this deadly disease is largely due to the increasing number of overweight and obese people. It reports more than one in three adults is overweight and more than one in 10 is obese.


    Diabetes in Africa, 2011 - 2030

    Complications from diabetes

    Etienne Krug, director of WHO's Department for Management of Noncommunicable Diseases, says diabetics will suffer complications from the disease if it is not detected in a timely manner and treated. “People with diabetes have a two to three times higher risk of cardiovascular disease," said Krug. "They have a 10 to 20 times higher risk of lower limb amputation. Diabetes is an important cause of blindness ...and an important cause of end stage renal disease.”


    Obesity is among the main causes of type-two diabetes.

    Krug tells VOA the economic cost of diabetes can be catastrophic for both the individual and society. He notes that monthly insulin treatment, which is a question of life and death for many patients, can be expensive. “We know that just the annual direct medical costs exceed $827 billion every year," said Krug. "It is a very, very vast, large number and that is not taking into account many other types of costs such as lost productivity, etc., etc…”

    Promoting healthy eating habits

    The U.N. agency says adopting a healthy lifestyle can prevent the majority of cases. The report’s recommendations include eating healthier, engaging in more physical activity and avoiding excessive weight gain.

    http://www.voanews.com/content/who-c...e/3271644.html
    Last edited by waltky; 04-08-2016 at 06:32 PM.

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    Stop shoving sugar down your pie hole.
    ΜOΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ


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    Diabetes surgery 'missed by thousands'...

    'Thousands miss out' on surgery for type-2 diabetes
    Tue, 24 May 2016 - Thousands of people with type-2 diabetes in the UK are missing out on obesity surgery that would slash blood sugars and even lead to remission in some cases, a team of experts say.
    Leading surgeon Prof Francesco Rubino described the gut operation as "the closest thing to a cure" available. UK guidelines already recommend the surgery for some patients. But experts argue the guidance needs to be expanded and made more prominent, as most doctors do not offer it.

    'Biggest changes'

    About three million people in the UK have type-2 diabetes, which can lead to serious complications, including kidney failure, blindness and heart disease. The team predict up to 100,000 obese diabetic patients - including those who are only mildly obese and have already tried medication and lifestyle changes - could benefit from the surgery, which involves removing part of the stomach or re-routing the gut. But they estimate fewer than 6,000 bariatric operations were carried out for type-2 diabetes last year. They looked at a growing body of evidence that suggests the treatment - traditionally used for weight-loss - not only reduces weight but also alters gut hormones and the lining of the gut to get blood sugars under control. This reduces the need for daily drugs or insulin injections and leads to a period of remission in more than a third of cases, experts say.

    'I lost three stone'

    Anne Mulvaney, aged 51, from London, said the surgery had given her a lifeline. She was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes four years ago and her weight climbed to 19 stone (120 kg). She tried to lose weight but she says it was nearly impossible. She was offered surgery in March, when taking anti-diabetic medication every day. Three months later she is now 15.6 stone (99kg) and though not yet what doctors would consider an ideal weight, she no longer has to take drugs to keep her blood sugar under control.

    She said: "Before the operation I no energy and was thirsty all the time. "Now I have lots of energy, don't crave sugar anymore and can exercise without getting breathless as quickly. "But it is not a quick fix. You have to be dedicated and make changes. The whole process, including seeing a psychologist, took about two years. "It feels a bit like a corset that gets tight when you have a spoonful too much. "I don't eat as much as I used to now - but I don't get hungry. "I definitely don't regret it - it has given me a new lease of life." Scientists argue the operations - which cost about £6,000 in established centres - would pay for themselves within two years, by cutting the cost of drugs and the expense of treating diabetic complications. They say the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) needs to make this option explicit in their diabetes guidance and to expand it to ensure long-term diabetics on the cusp of obesity are also considered.

    'Needless barriers'

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    Soldering on with DIY diabetes monitoring kits...

    The DIY diabetes kit that's keeping us alive
    Thu, 14 Jul 2016 - Meet the growing number of type 1 diabetics who are building their own unapproved, open source monitoring systems.
    "I was sending a seven-year-old to school with a drug that could kill him," says Alistair Samuelson, whose son George, now nine, has type 1 diabetes. Frustrated with traditional monitoring and its risks, Mr Samuelson and George have since joined a growing group of T1 sufferers who are building their own solutions to manage their diabetes - even though they come with their own uncertainties. Traditional monitoring involves taking blood samples from the fingertips several times a day and administering precise injections of insulin to maintain blood sugar levels. However, over the course of an hour they can change dramatically and too much insulin can be fatal.


    Alistair Samuelson and George with their phone and smartwatch

    It works for many - new British Prime Minister Theresa May has talked openly about living with type 1 diabetes since her diagnosis in 2012. "In basic management terms, it's the same for everybody," she told Diabetes UK in an interview. "You have to get into a routine where you are regularly doing the testing." But Mr Samuelson and George are among thousands who have chosen a different approach.

    Open Source

    They are using Nightscout, an open source platform developed and run by a global community of type 1 diabetics. Open source means it is freely available for anyone to use and modify - in this case at their own risk. It's a combination of a commercial product called a Continuing Glucose Monitor (CGM), which provides constant updates, a DIY transmitter and the freely available Nightscout programming code which enables the CGM data to be shared with a cloud data storage area - where it can then be distributed to other devices. So both father and son now receive constant updates on their phones (and George's smartwatch) and are able to assess George's needs minute by minute. It has given George the gift of freedom - he can now join his friends on sleepovers and enjoy his favourite sports.

    Mr Samuelson acknowledges that it is not without risk. "I am using open source software to do calibrations. Open source software is giving me final numbers and it is not an approved algorithm - it's not going to be exactly the same as the proprietary algorithms," he says. "But you have to make an informed decision... compared to all the other risks the benefits massively outweigh them." Why not use the commercial products offering this shared data? There are not many on the market - and they are expensive. Rachel from Guildford is using G5, a system by Dexcom, to monitor her son Joe, also nine, but at current rates it will cost the family thousands of pounds a year. Most of Dexcom's apps are also only compatible with Apple devices.

    MORE

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    Fatty livers increase kids' risk of diabetes...

    Fatty livers increase kids' risk of diabetes
    August 1, 2016 – About seven million children in the U.S. have fatty livers, and nearly a third of those kids also have prediabetes or diabetes, according to a new study.
    So-called nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) “is one of the biggest risk factors for the development of type 2 diabetes in children,” said Dr. Jeffrey B. Schwimmer, director of the Fatty Liver Clinic at Rady Children's Hospital in San Diego. “The prevalence of type 2 diabetes is approximately 1 in 2,500 in the general population, 1 in 200 in children with obesity, and 1 in 15 in children with NAFLD,” Schwimmer said. Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) can cause scarring in the liver and can lead to liver failure and the need for a transplant. It may be related to genetics, obesity and some medications. It can be treated but not cured.

    In adults, NAFLD often coincides with abnormal sugar metabolism. People with NAFLD who have type 2 diabetes have a higher risk for a more severe form of liver disease called nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), which carries the highest risk for cirrhosis, end stage liver disease, and liver cancer. The researchers studied 675 kids under age 18 with NAFLD. The average body mass index (BMI) was 32, above the clinical cutoff for obesity of 30. (Body mass index, a measure of weight in relation to height, is calculated differently for children than for adults. An online calculator is here: http://bit.ly/1pmKFtK.) Twenty-three percent of the kids with NAFLD had prediabetes and almost seven percent had type 2 diabetes.

    Girls with NAFLD were five times as likely as boys to have type 2 diabetes. More than 40 percent of kids with type 2 diabetes also had NASH, compared to 34 percent of kids with prediabetes and 22 percent of those with normal blood sugar, the researchers reported in JAMA Pediatrics. When the liver gets fatty, some of its metabolic pathways are progressively impaired, including insulin sensitivity, said Dr. Valerio Nobili, head of the Liver Research Unit at Bambino Gesu Childrens Hospital in Rome, Italy.

    Nobili was not part of the new study. Currently, treatment for NAFLD involves optimizing lifestyle including nutrition, physical activity, and mental well-being, he said. Based on this study, kids with NAFLD should also have blood sugar tests and be monitored for progression of liver disease, diabetes and the consequences of both, he said. “Although children with NAFLD overall are typically boys, girls with NAFLD are more likely to have diabetes,” Schwimmer said. “Special attention should be given to children with the combination of type 2 diabetes and NASH, as they are at particularly high risk for premature morbidity and mortality.”

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/fatty-liv...02.html?ref=gs

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    Insulin pump users beware...

    US Company Warns That Its Insulin Pumps Can Be Hacked
    October 05, 2016 - The U.S. firm Johnson & Johnson, one of the biggest manufacturers of medical appliances, warned this week that its insulin pumps could be hacked, meaning unauthorized persons might be able to change insulin doses of thousands of diabetes patients.
    The vulnerability affects only pumps that have wireless remote control, which uses unencrypted radio frequencies, but they are not connected to the internet. Recently it was revealed some pacemakers and defibrillators also may be open to hacking.


    Hackers and digital security personnel attend the annual Black Hat conference for digital self-defense in Las Vegas, Aug. 4, 2011. At that time, a security researcher who is diabetic identified flaws that could allow an attacker to remotely control insulin pumps; now, Johnson & Johnson has warned that its pumps could be hacked.

    The company said the probability of unauthorized access to its insulin pumps "is extremely low," but it has nevertheless sent warnings to doctors' offices and more than 100,000 patients in the United States and Canada. Insulin pumps are wearable devices that automatically adjust the release of insulin according to a diabetic's level of physical activity.

    http://www.voanews.com/a/company-war...d/3538435.html
    See also:

    Scientists Find More Accurate Way to Test Blood Sugar Levels
    October 05, 2016 - In one-third of people with diabetes, the "gold standard" method for monitoring blood sugar levels is inaccurate. But scientists have found a way to fix the discrepancy, helping diabetics more effectively manage their disease.
    There are 422 million people with diabetes worldwide, according to World Health Organization estimates, and they face such devastating complications of the disease as blindness, kidney failure, heart disease and limb amputation. Keeping blood sugar levels in a range that's as close to normal as possible is considered the best way to reduce the likelihood that a diabetic will have to deal with those complications. But researchers from Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital found in a study of 200 diabetics that the A1C test, considered the most accurate method for measuring glucose levels, is inaccurate in one in three people.

    Three-month period

    The A1C offers a snapshot of blood sugar levels based on a three-month analysis of glycated hemoglobin, or the hemoglobin to which glucose is bound. The test is considered more accurate than daily blood sugar levels, which can vary minute by minute. But when scientists compared daily glucose monitoring to the A1C, they found discrepancies based on the age of the red blood cells, according to John Higgins, a professor of systems medicine at Harvard and a clinical pathologist.


    Judith Garcia, 19, fills a syringe as she prepares to give herself an injection of insulin at her home in Commerce, California

    Red blood cells live an average of 45 days. But they live longer in some people, prompting this comparison by Higgins. "I think a simplistic analogy is just a sponge sitting on a damp counter," he said. "The more water you have on your counter, the more soaked that sponge is going to get. But also if you leave that sponge on a counter even longer, it's going to soak up even more water."

    So, the A1C level of a person whose blood sugar seems well-controlled day to day may actually be elevated if his red blood cells are older. "And the opposite is true as well," said Higgins. "If someone has had a really high level of blood sugar but his blood cells are pretty young, it may look like he is fine when in fact his blood sugar's been high." When the age of each person's red blood cells was factored in, the error rate in the A1C's three-month blood sugar reading was cut in half in the study. The findings were reported in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

    Continuous measurement
    Last edited by waltky; 10-07-2016 at 11:31 AM.

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    Granny says dat's a lotta money..

    Cost of Diabetes Epidemic Reaches $850 Billion a Year
    November 13, 2017 - The number of people living with diabetes has tripled since 2000, pushing the global cost of the disease to $850 billion a year, medical experts said Tuesday.
    The majority of those affected have type 2 diabetes, which is linked to obesity and lack of exercise, and the epidemic is spreading particularly fast in poorer countries as people adopt Western diets and urban lifestyles. The latest estimates from the International Diabetes Federation mean that one in 11 adults worldwide have the condition, which occurs when the amount of sugar in the blood is too high.



    A paramedic checks the blood sugar level of a patient at a diabetes clinic in Jakarta, Indonesia



    The total number of diabetics is now 451 million and is expected to reach 693 million by 2045 if current trends continue. The high price of dealing with the disease reflects not only the cost of medicines but also the management of a range of complications, such as limb amputations and eye problems.


    https://www.voanews.com/a/cost-diabe...r/4113942.html

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    104 is pretty good, my Dad has type 2, I check mine, I am allways in the 90's. But, I am 37
    There is no God but Resister and Refugee is his messenger’.

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    Quote Originally Posted by resister View Post
    104 is pretty good, my Dad has type 2, I check mine, I am allways in the 90's. But, I am 37
    Depends I suppose. My mom always tried to keep hers around a 100 and it wasn't until she was at this a couple years her doctor was like, "Oh no, that is too low. You should try to keep it around 140."

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