Type 2 diabetes has always been considered a chronic health condition that is not reversible. Although experts have hypothesized that reversing the disease may be possible, a team of Canadian researchers demonstrated that the conditions may now be right. They have put forward a theory, published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology that through a combination of lifestyle changes combined with intense diabetes medications that disease can be turned around.
“By using a combination of oral medications, insulin, and lifestyle therapies to treat patients intensively for two to four months, we found that up to 40 percent of participants were able to stay in remission three months after stopping diabetes medications,” Natalia McInnes, one of the researchers from McMaster University in Canada noted during an interview.
The findings by McInnes and her team give rise to the notion that type 2 diabetes can be reversed. The research McInnes said might shift the paradigm of treating diabetes from simply controlling glucose to an approach where we induce remission and then monitor patients for any signs of relapse.
For the study researchers recruited 83 participants with type 2 diabetes and randomly divided them into three groups.
Two of these groups followed short-term interventions – lasting either eight weeks or 16 weeks respectively – combined with personalized exercise plans and meals designed to lowered their calorie intake by 500 to 750 calories a day. They also had regular discussions with a nurse and dietitian.
During the treatment, they were also prescribed insulin and oral medications designed to better manage the condition.
The third group was the control group and received standard blood sugar management and health advice during the same period.
90 days into the experiment, 11 out of 27 patients following the 16-week program showed complete or partial diabetes remission, as did six out of 28 individuals in the eight-week group.
The results of this pilot study suggest patients with type 2 diabetes have more options to treat their condition, McInnes concluded.
Currently, the treatment has only proven to work in the short term, but more studies using other drug combinations might ultimately lead to even more impressive remission rates.
