Diabetes treatment

“For forty-eight hours after admission to the hospital the patient is kept on an ordinary diet, to determine the severity of his diabetes. Then he is starved, and no food allowed save whiskey and black coffee. The whiskey is given in the coffee: 1 ounce of whiskey every two hours, from 7am until 7pm. The whiskey is not an essential part of treatment; it merely furnishes a few calories and keeps the patient more comfortable while he is being starved.” Starvation (Allen) Treatment of Diabetes (1915).

We have known for more than half a century that good control of blood sugar (glucose) is important for the normal development of the unborn baby throughout pregnancy. During those years there has been much progress in advising

After the discovery of insulin in the 1920´s, available insulin was from natural sources (animal pancreas) until human insulin was made available in the early 1980s. None of these insulins was ideal for injection under the skin. Now, new

Glucose is the fuel on which many parts of our bodies depend. It is also the blood-borne chemical responsible for the damage which causes so many potential problems to people with diabetes. Here Philip Home examines the link between these properties of glucose.

Editor-in-chief's editorial

On the occasion of the signing of the St Vincent Declaration in St Vincent, Italy in October 1989, representatives of diabetes organizations and government health departments from European countries agreed unanimously on key health objectives for people with diabetes. Five-year targets were incorporated within the framework of the Declaration, which effectively recognized that diabetes outcomes were measurable; European nations were thus challenged to improve standards of care.

A new generation of treatments for Type 1 diabetes is likely to come from within our own bodies. We know that a wide range of cell types have the ability to regenerate. Although some of these cells are found outside the pancreas, their regenerative capacity can be harnessed to replenish the insulin-producing islet cells in the pancreas that are destroyed in diabetes. In this article, Denise Faustman looks at the potential benefits and pitfalls of four biologically based therapies, all of which take advantage of the body’s own capacity for healing and renewal.

Diabetes is rapidly emerging as a major health-care problem in India, especially in urban areas where the prevalence of Type 2 diabetes has been reported as 12% of the adult population. Furthermore, there is an equally large pool of people with

Kyrgyzstan is a small mountainous country with a predominantly agricultural economy; it gained independence with the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991. For a significant sector of the Kyrgyzstani population, economic difficulties at national level translate into high unemployment and widespread impoverishment. Kyrgyzstan inherited an extensive but basic health-care system, with a functioning – albeit fragmented – structure for managing chronic diseases.

When we eat, the concentration of glucose in our blood rises due to the uptake of glucose from the digestion of starch and other carbohydrates in the gut. In healthy people, the increase is modest; eating activates other processes that