Treating type 2 diabetes with drugs – rather than simply monitoring diet and living a health lifestyle – can help sufferers live up to EIGHT years longer.

Intensive and multi-pronged treatment makes patients 45 per cent less likely to die, by lowering heart and blood vessel problems, as well as reducing the risk of eye and kidney complications by 30-50 per cent.

The Type 2 diabetes ‘epidemic’ affects 5-10 per cent of the adult population in most countries, consists of high blood sugar, elevated blood lipids, increased risk of blood clots and high blood pressure – all increasing the risk of vascular and organ damage lowering life expectancy.

On top of these side effects, some type 2 diabetes patients have an excess of the albumin protein in their urine, an indicator of damaged blood vessels, which, left untreated, significantly increases the risk of heart disease and premature death.

So Danish university researchers analysed a 21-year-long ‘Steno-2’ study, which compared patients receiving intensified and standard treatment for almost eight years, to prove how patients can prolong their lifespan.

Doctor Peter Gaede, of Slagelse Hospital and the University of Southern Denmark, said: “The outcome of our study is very encouraging and emphasises the need for early and intensified treatment of multiple modifiable risk factors for a poor prognosis of patients with type 2 diabetes.”

Experts hoped to find the differences in lifespan in patients receiving the different methods of treatment, and highlight how sufferers with the extra side effect, microalbuminuria, have a much lower life expectancy.

Study co-author Dr Jens Oellgaard said: “In previous reports from the Steno-2 study we have demonstrated the unprecedented efficacy of this structured multifactorial intervention where development of complications in the eyes, kidneys, legs, heart and brain is halved compared with conventional multifactorial treatment.”

Patients receiving ‘intensive’ treatment at a specialised diabetes clinic – consisting of a green and low fat diet, more daily exercise and instructions on quitting tobacco, as well as multiple drugs treating blood glucose, blood lipids, blood platelets, blood pressure and microalbuminuria.

Regular patients were simply seen by their GP and treated according to existing national guidelines for diabetes care for eight years, then for the next 13 years, patients in both original treatment arms were in a post-trial setting instructed to follow the same multifactorial and intensified treatments as originally given to the intensified group only.

Some 21 years after the start of the study, 38 intensive-therapy patients had died, compared to 55 conventional-therapy patients, meaning the original intensively treated patients were 45% less likely to die – surviving a median of eight years longer, and also benefiting from no new cardiovascular complications, and less risk of complications in the eyes and kidneys.

Dr. Hans-Henrik Parving, a senior author from the National University Hospital of Copenhagen, said: “This long-term follow-up of the Steno-2 study demonstrates beyond any doubt the sustainability of the intensified and multipronged treatment approach of type 2 diabetes patients with microalbuminuria introduced by us more than 21 years ago.

“The benefits for the patients in terms of a major extension of life and a halving of new cardiovascular complications speak for themselves.”

The findings were published in the journal Diabetologia.

http://so-dawn.com/2016/09/02/new-way-to-manage-diabetes-experts/