Everything you know is wrong
If you’re a fan of Weird Al Yankovick, you’ve probably heard this song from the 1990s. In the case of a recent study, Weird Al’s song could be onto something.
A diabetes specialist looked among medical literature for proof to support the use of glucose-lowering drugs, but he couldn’t find any.
Knowledge challenged
Dr. Victor Montori from the Mayo Clinic says that the majority of experts in the field say that controlling blood sugar is associated with a lower risk of developing blindness, having a limb amputated or undergoing dialysis. “When we looked at the evidence for that”, Montori said, “we could not see any signal that would suggest that is true despite the question being asked at least since the 1970s.”
This finding reveals the plight in the knowledge of type 2 diabetes: the relationship between blood sugar and the disease is not completely understood.
it is possible that there is a factor apart from blood sugar that is the culprit for long-term complications
“There is lots of debate and discussion as to what exactly is the causal relationship,” said Dr. Hertzel Gerstein, from McMaster University. “We know, for instance, that the higher the blood sugar the higher the risk of heart attacks, the higher the risk of cancer, the higher the risk of strokes, but whether other things related to the diabetes are causing those things is not known,” he added.
In other words, it is possible that there is a factor apart from blood sugar that is the culprit for long-term complications.
We need to know more
According to a research group at the University of British Columbia, this ambiguity requires a change in the way type 2 diabetes drugs are approved.
All we know is that anti-diabetes drugs reduce blood sugar levels in the short-term. Blood sugar levels are distracting researchers from discovering and pursuing new leads.
Thanks for reading. Here’s some Weird Al.
