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Therapeutic targets in the management of type 1 diabetes

Lookup NU author(s): Emeritus Professor Philip Home

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Abstract

For historical reasons, diabetes has long been linked with blood and urine glucose control, partly because these were clearly linked to acute symptoms, and partly because glucose became measurable around 200 years ago. Today it is recognized that there is far more to diabetes than simply monitoring symptoms and blood glucose. Intensive management has an impact on the quality of life. Late complications have their own risk factors and markers. Monitoring and early detection of these risk factors and markers can lead to changes in treatment before tissue damage is too severe. Accordingly, professionals now find themselves monitoring a range of adverse outcomes, markers for adverse outcomes, risk factors and risk markers for microvascular and arterial disease, acute complications of therapy, and the care structures needed to deliver this. Adverse outcomes lend themselves to targets for complication control in populations, and markers of adverse outcomes (such as retinopathy and raised albumin excretion rate) in treatment cohorts. Surveillance systems will have targets for yearly recall and review of early complications. Metabolic (surrogate) outcomes can be monitored in individual patients, but monitoring is only of value in so far as it guides interventions, and this requires comparison to some intervention level or absolute target. Even for blood glucose control this is not easy, for conventional measures such as glycated haemoglobin have their own problems, and more modern approaches such as post-prandial glucose levels are controversial and less convenient to measure. In many people with type 1 diabetes targets for blood pressure, LDL cholesterol, and serum triglycerides will also be appropriate, and need to be part of any protocol of management. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Publication metadata

Author(s): Home PD

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: Diabetes/Metabolism: Research and Reviews

Year: 2002

Volume: 18

Issue: 1

Pages: S7-S13

Print publication date: 01/01/2002

ISSN (print): 1520-7552

ISSN (electronic): 1520-7560

Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/dmrr.204

DOI: 10.1002/dmrr.204

PubMed id: 11921424


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