Diabetes Update (2002) Diabetes Update (2001) Diabetes and Heart Disease: Can we sever this Deadly Link? More Health Resource Articles
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Healthcare Community Takes Aim at growing Epidemic
The United States, and in fact the world, is in the midst of a diabetes epidemic. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, over the past decade there has been a 40 percent increase in the percentage of the U.S. population with diabetes, and this trend is predicted to continue to climb at this astonishing rate unless something is done to change its course.
More than 16 million Americans are living with diabetes and the risk of developing serious complications, including heart and kidney disease, stroke, blindness and conditions leading to amputation. A full third of those who have diabetes don't even know it, as the disease often develops without obvious symptoms. The remainder are faced with the challenges of taking care of this chronic disease in hopes of preventing long-term complications.
But even as the number of Americans with diabetes grows, so too does the body of knowledge surrounding the nation's fifth-deadliest disease. The past year has highlighted promising advances in genetics, immunology, stem cell research and other areas of basic research, as well as new areas of clinical research and clinical care, which will ultimately lead to major improvements in treatment and offer potential for cure or prevention of this disease.

Two Kinds of Diabetes
One of the big challenges to solving the problem of diabetes is the complexity of the disease. The best recognized sign of diabetes is an abnormality in using and storing glucose (the major form of sugar in the blood). This causes abnormally high levels of glucose in the blood, which can lead to complications.
There are two main types of diabetes, simply referred to as type 1 and type 2, as well as other special types, such as gestational diabetes, which occurs in women during pregnancy. Each of these forms of diabetes is quite distinct.
People who have type 1 diabetes (formerly known as juvenile diabetes) have lost the ability to produce insulin, the major hormone that controls the level of glucose in the blood. This is due to a process in which the immune cells of the body, which normally fight infection, turn against and destroy the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. People who have type 1 diabetes must take daily insulin shots to survive. Although type 1 diabetes most frequently develops in children, it can strike at any age. Approximately 5 to 10 percent of the 16 million cases of diabetes in the United States are type 1.

Type 2 diabetes occurs most often in adults, though it has recently been growing in prevalence among children and adolescents. This type of diabetes accounts for 90 percent of the cases in the United States and is often linked to obesity. In type 2 diabetes, the body produces insulin, but tissues such as those in the liver, muscle and fat are resistant to it. This leads to an inability to process glucose and increased levels of glucose in the blood. Type 2 diabetes is sometimes called non-insulin-dependent diabetes, since insulin injections are not required to survive. Although many patients with type 2 diabetes can be treated with diet, exercise and oral agents, almost one-third of them do take insulin to control blood glucose levels.

Complications
Insulin is not a cure for diabetes, and in fact people with diabetes can develop both short-term and long-term complications. In the short term, individuals with diabetes must closely control their blood sugars to avoid near-term complications that can lead to dehydration, metabolic imbalance, coma and even death. In the long term, diabetes can cause changes in both small and large blood vessels, leading to heart disease, stroke, blindness, kidney failure, amputations, nerve damage and impotence. Several studies have now clearly demonstrated that people with both type 1 and type 2 diabetes can lower their risk for developing complications significantly by keeping their blood sugar levels as close to normal as possible.

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