Diabetes

Six months ago, the nation's diabetes experts made a sensational announcement. By following a strict medical regimen, they said, diabetics can measurably slow the onset and maybe even avert the dire complications of the disease.The threat of blindness, kidney failure, heart attack or amputation, they proclaimed, could be greatly reduced or virtually eliminated.Diabetes centers across the nation geared up for an onslaught of patients wanting to begin the new treatment. They hired more staff, put in extra telephone lines, prepared educational materials and ordered the home monitoring devices that would allow diabetics to test their blood sugar from four to 10 times a day.The blood sugar tests are a crucial part of the tight-control regimen that the study, which followed 1,441 patients with Type I diabetes for nine years, found to be clearly beneficial to diabetics.

LAS VEGAS, Nev. -- In what doctors termed the most important discovery for diabetics since insulin, researchers said yesterday that the devastating complications of the disease could be prevented or delayed.They said this is possible when diabetics closely monitor their blood sugar levels with a special meter throughout the day and inject themselves with insulin four to seven times daily to keep their blood sugar at a near-normal level.In current practice, patients do not monitor their blood so closely and give themselves one or two doses of insulin a day, which causes their blood sugar to vary greatly.

HERE'S WHAT Owings Mills wrestling coach Guy Pritzker thinks of Eric Vinores: If Vinores were an animal with a leg caught in a trap, he would rather gnaw off his leg than surrender. Believe it or not, Pritzker uses the analogy as a testament to Vinores' penchant for full-out perseverance, not as a sign that the 140-pounder is stubborn (though he believes that, too). "He would break his neck to get out of a move," Pritzker said of his senior. "That's what makes him a champion. He's always been a little better than he should have been.

Rising levels of blood sugar can subject diabetics and nondiabetics alike to a greater risk of cardiovascular disease and death, according to two studies being released today. Reports in Annals of Internal Medicine suggested that doctors evaluate blood sugar alongside cholesterol and blood pressure in assessing a person's risk of heart disease. What's more, researchers said, the current epidemic of diabetes among both children and adults could foretell an epidemic of heart disease in years to come unless people take aggressive steps to control their blood sugar.

In what is being called a landmark study of a national epidemic, doctors reported yesterday that modest diet and exercise are remarkably effective in delaying the onset of diabetes in people who are at risk. People who lost an average of 10 pounds and engaged in simple exercise - such as walking 30 minutes a day - cut their odds of getting diabetes by 58 percent. Others who took a widely prescribed diabetes pill reduced their risk, too, but only by 31 percent. "For the first time, we have shown that, yes, you can intervene and prevent the disease," said Dr. Christopher Saudek, president of the American Diabetes Association and director of the diabetes center at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

Scientists at Rockefeller University have prevented diabetes in mice predisposed to develop the autoimmune disorder, a feat that may hold promise for people with Type 1 diabetes. Kristin Tarbell and her colleagues at the New York institution extracted a specific population of immune system cells called dendritic cells from the mice and placed them in a lab dish with a small number of immune regulatory cells, called suppressor T-cells. The dendritic cells have the power to stimulate the regulatory cells to duplicate themselves.

Researchers have discovered that an enzyme that plays a principal role in the development of the most severe form of diabetes is the same enzyme as one found in the brain.The finding could lead to a simple test to screen for people who are likely to develop the disease, years before their symptoms appear. A report on the finding is being published today in the British journal Nature.Diabetes researchers had had difficulty studying the enzyme because only small amounts of it could be found in the pancreas, which does not function properly in diabetics.

Squinting at the nightly news last week, Pat Parrish found herself moving closer to the television. The announcer was describing new guidelines for diabetes -- including screening that would have caught her disease earlier, keeping her vision from being blurred, her feet from being gnarled, her kidneys from being damaged.For years, even as her physician dismissed a few high blood-sugar tests, the disease was quietly eating away at Parrish's nerves and organs. The Columbia woman, 60, was stunned to learn that 8 million Americans were in the same predicament.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- An experimental insulin inhaler worked just as well as injections in a study of diabetics, which was released yesterday at the annual American Diabetes Association conference in Chicago.If the inhaler is effective in large trials starting this fall, it may some day replace most or all of the daily shots that diabetics need, a University of Miami professor said in releasing the study."This could dramatically change the way we treat diabetes," said Dr. Jay Skyler, lead researcher in the study.

It was bad enough having to grow up with two younger sisters, but then Kristan Bosch learned that she had diabetes. Her sisters could have candy, and she couldn't, she complained.Worse, she felt she was the only seventh-grader at Old MillMiddle School with the disease until she learned about the support group founded by school nurse Beverly Lesher and met Becky, Christopher and Eric -- other Old Mill students with the disease."I've learned I'm not the only one with diabetes," Kristan said.