Study: Diabetes Heart Treatments are ineffective
The new and aggressive treatment strategies that were expected to counter heart attacks in Type 2 Diabetes patients have proved ineffective and even harmful.
A study explains that even Doctors have given up saying that the results have been surprising and disappointing. About 21 million Americans are suffering from Type 2 Diabetes, a disease that puts them at the risk of a heart attack.
Doctors now believe that the best remedial measures are avoiding cigarettes and take medication to lower Cholesterol and Blood Pressure. Still, Type 2 Diabetes runs the risk of an impending heart attack. Doctors have been trying different strategies to get blood pressure to a normal range and also having the cholesterol in manageable proportions.
“Doctors always want to improve the lives of their patients, and that often leads to pressure to treat more and more,” says Dr. Henry N. Ginsberg, director of the Irving Institute for Clinical and Translational Research at Columbia University. He adds that the new study will save many people from consuming drugs that are irrelevant.
This research study was presented in American College of Cardiology and has also been published in The New England Journal of Medicine. Meanwhile, if we analyze the Type 2 Diabetes it makes the body resistant to hormone insulin and this leads to abnormally high blood sugar level and may cause eye, kidney and nerve disease. However, it’s the heart diseases, which actually kills a person. About one third people die due to heart attack which is instigated by diabetes.
About 25 percent of heart attack patients have abnormally high blood sugar levels. However, research has proven that even if high blood sugar levels are controlled but it doesn’t stop heart attack in patients with Type 2 Diabetes. Research also adds that most of these patients are found with other diseases like heart disease soar, high levels of cholesterol, and high levels of blood pressure.
Infact all of them were either or old or overweight. “Type 2 Diabetes captures all these risk factors in one patient,” said Dr. David Nathan, director of the diabetes center at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Well it’s logical to look at the other risk factors. A study projects that a perfect blood pressure level is then, when the systolic pressure is at 120 and that is considered to be normal. This was a possible logic as it was found that the rate of a heart attack increases as the systolic pressure increases from 120 levels.
To put things in perspective as far as ideal blood pressure levels were concerned a study with 4773 participants was taken for a drug test to check out whether the systolic Blood Pressure was below 120 or not. But, actually it was found out that the Blood Pressure level of most candidates was more than 140. Even low levels of Blood Pressure can cause heart attacks. Low level means an increase in the Potasium level which is quite dangerous for low Blood Pressure patients.
What’s more it was proved that heart attack was more in patients with lower blood pressure than higher blood pressure patients. Another study on about 6400 patients with Type 2 Diabetes proved that patients whose systolic pressure was less than 130 or 140 levels were worse off than patients with systolic pressure of more than 140 levels. It actually increased the rate of heart attack even more. The systolic pressure as was aforementioned should be ideally 120. Fresh guidelines are to be made on that issue.
People with low level of HDL cholesterol and high level of Tri-glycerides are the perfect combination which increases the rate of a heart attack. It makes sense that Type 2 Diabetes is a very serious threat to the society.
“It’s a disappointment,” said Dr. Ginsberg, a lead study investigator. “But it’s very, very important,” because it says most people will not be helped by taking the additional drug.” He adds.
Dr. Denise Simons-Morton of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, who is the project officer for the federal study, said that “doctors and patients now know that the inclination to do intensive treatment that people seemed to think would be better for cardiovascular risk reduction wasn’t better.”
A final study treads the path whether a rise in Blood Glucose after a meal was really dangerous and did it cause heart attack. “Every meeting you go to, some academic is talking about how postprandial hyperglycemia is really bad and that you should aim specifically to get it lower,” Dr. Nathan said. The study, he said, “is a direct test of that.”
The study had about 9300 patients running high risk of diabetes. There sugar levels were high so the risk of a heart attack or a disease doesn’t decrease.
“Neither drug should be used in people with impaired glucose tolerance but not diabetes in order to prevent cardiovascular events unless there is another indication, like significant hypertension,” said Dr. Robert M. Califf, vice chancellor for clinical research at Duke University School of Medicine and chairman of the study.
Dr. Nathan agrees. “It is a negative study,” he said.
Dr. Daniel Einhorn, president-elect of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists, differs somewhat and opines that he wouldn’t be apprehensive and use the innovation on his patients at least.
“It’s hard to make a case for a public health recommendation,” Dr. Einhorn said. “But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a benefit in an individual case.”
But actually is there any benefit. “Lower is not necessarily better,” Dr. Nathan says. So Type 2 Diabetes is dangerous and it’s official now.
