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Friday, July 20, 2007In the study, Farmer's team randomly assigned 453 patients with type 2 diabetes to one of three groups. One group had their blood sugar level checked three times a month. The second group was given a meter to test their blood sugar at home and told to have their doctor interpret the results. The third group was given meters and taught how to interpret the findings. At one year, Farmer's group found no difference in blood sugar levels between the groups. In addition, there was no evidence that having patients monitor their blood sugar improved their glucose control. Moreover, half of the people who had been given glucose monitors stopped using them before the end of the study, Farmer said. Although that link is to a story generated by a diabetes conference, the full paper is online here. As you can see from this graph, checking blood sugars daily didn't make much of a change in the HbA1c, our standard measure of control. This is certainly something to chew over. Glucometers are expensive. And, although the machines themselves are often given away in promotional stunts, the strips they use to measure the blood sugar are also quite expensive. Medicare spends millions a year on this alone. (Which is why doctors now have to specify on a prescription for the test strips how often their patients test their blood sugar and why if it's more than once a day.) But it's hard to give up our intuitive ways, isn't it? posted by Sydney on 7/20/2007 06:26:00 PM 2 comments 2 Comments:
This was first reported a short time ago in the popular press. My concern then, as now, is the drive to make people diabetics in order to change codlings, increase office visits, and sell product. We have seen the drug industry, and device manufactures, increasingly involved in lowering long held standards in any number of areas.
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I note that the number of tests used in the trial was 6 per week. Useless.
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