Doctors at three leading research institutions and the American Diabetes Association report that treating patients with prediabetes as if they had diabetes could help prevent or delay the most severe complications associated with this chronic disease, which affects about thirty million people in the United States.
Writing in the Sept. 23 online edition of the journal Diabetes Care, the authors – including UNC’s John Buse, MD, PhD, professor of medicine and director of the UNC Diabetes Care Center – say that patients who have a fasting blood sugar of 126 or higher are diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, and most patients are prescribed the first line medication metformin. People with fasting blood sugar levels between 100 and 125 are determined to have prediabetes.
