Treatment Of Diabetes In The Elderly

Treatment Of Diabetes In The Elderly.
Better diabetes care has slashed rates of complications such as resolution attacks, strokes and amputations in older adults, a unfledged study shows. "All the event rates, if you look at them, everything is a lot better than it was in the 1990s, dramatically better," said contemplate author Dr Elbert Huang, an associate professor of pharmaceutical at the University of Chicago. The study also found that hypoglycemia, or low blood sugar - a incidental effect of medications that control diabetes - has become one of the top problems seen in seniors, suggesting that doctors may want to rethink drug regimens as patients age.

The findings, published online Dec 9, 2013 in JAMA Internal Medicine, are based on more than 72000 adults grey 60 and older with quintessence 2 diabetes. They are being tracked through the Kaiser Permanente Northern California Diabetes Registry. Researchers tallied diabetic complications by maturity and length of time with the disease. People with group 2 diabetes, the most common form of the disease, have too much sugar in the blood.

It's estimated that nearly 23 million people have type 2 diabetes in the United States, about half of them older than 60. Many more are expected to come about diabetes in coming years. In general, complications of diabetes tended to exacerbate as people got older, the study found. They were also more fierce in people who'd lived with the disease longer. Heart disease was the chief complication seen in seniors who'd lived with the infection for less than 10 years.

For every 1000 seniors followed for a year, there were about eight cases of stomach disease diagnosed in those under age 70, about 11 cases in those in their 70s, and roughly 15 cases for those elderly 80 and older. Among those aged 80 or older who'd had diabetes for more than a decade, there were 24 cases of nucleus disease for every 1000 people who were followed for a year. That's a big plunge from just a decade ago, when a prior study found rates of heart disease in elderly diabetics to be about seven times higher - 182 cases for every 1000 citizenry followed for a year.

Heart disease isn't the only dilemma to see drastic declines. Dangerous episodes of high blood sugar have plunged about 10-fold since 2002, while amputations appear to be about three times lower. Things are so much better, in fact, that it's the healing itself that's now become one of the important reasons seniors with diabetes get sick. Hypoglycemia due to plummeting blood sugar - characterized by weakness, basics palpitations, trembling, sweating, trouble speaking and solicitude - is now the third most common nonfatal complication of diabetes in long-term diabetics old 70 and older, the researchers found.

So "Hypoglycemia is a side effect of therapy and it's not a talented thing. It's now more common than kidney failure or amputation. That means the side effects of curing are now more common than the things we're trying to prevent. An expert who wasn't involved with the learning praised its focus on older adults, who make up about half of those living with diabetes in the United States.

And "We are getting more and more interested about the complications that occur in older adults with ongoing treatment," said Dr Gisele Wolf-Klein, number one of geriatric education at the North Shore-LIJ Health System in New Hyde Park, NY Wolf-Klein, who has feigned rates of hypoglycemia in nursing home residents, says it's an underappreciated problem. "We insufficiency to understand that older diabetics may be continuing to take off the same medication they always took, but they've completely changed their lifestyle," said Wolf-Klein.

For example, many seniors competition to get enough to eat during the day, something doctors may not think to ask about. Metabolism also slows with age, Wolf-Klein said, making drugs that tone down blood sugar especially persuasive in this population male enhancement formula 41. "We have to remember that because people are living much longer, the way you treat diabetes in a 40-year-old is accepted to be very different than the way you treat diabetes in an older patient.