Pre-Diabetes Must Be Treated Suitably, Doctors Insist

Diabetes experts from the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists issued on Tuesday the first suggestions regarding the treatment of people with pre-diabetes, hoping to control the diabetes epidemic. At present, there are no concrete guidelines for diagnosing and dealing with pre-diabetes, a health problem in which a person’s blood glucose levels are higher than normal but not sufficiently high to be categorized as diabetes. More than 56 million Americans currently suffer from pre-diabetes, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dr. Harold Lebovitz, a professor of medicine at the division of endocrinology and metabolism/diabetes at the State University of New York Health Sciences Center at Brooklyn, explained that diabetes is the major cause of kidney failure and most blindness cases in adults, and generates approximately 60 percent of cardiovascular disorders.

The American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists is urging for serious measures to be taken in order to prevent pre-diabetes from progressing to advanced diabetes. The first step involves everyday life changes, such as diet and exercise and, according to Dr. Harold Lebovitz, although such lifestyle plans are expensive, the loss would be compensated with the money saved in health care.

Since there are no drug treatments authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for remedying pre-diabetes, the AACE suggests another way to get them: decrease the number at which blood sugar levels indicate diabetes. This way, people who are now classified as pre-diabetic would benefit from proper medications in order to treat their disease.