Intervening aggressively to roll back the onset of type 2 diabetes does works in adults, but once the medication and treatment ends, the disease always returns, according to a study published today in the journal Diabetes Care.
UW Medicine’s Dr. Steven Kahn, the study chair of the NIH multicenter Restoring Insulin Secretion (RISE) Study, said researchers were hoping that early, aggressive treatment of adults with prediabetes or new onset type 2 diabetes might turn back or slow the disease. But that’s not what the results showed.
“The RISE medication studies show that these treatments for prediabetes or recently diagnosed type 2 diabetes do not make lasting changes to beta cells,” which control insulin production and release,” he said. Kahn is a professor of medicine, Division of Metabolism, Endocrinology, and Nutrition, at the University of Washington School of Medicine. He is also an endocrinologist at VA Puget Sound Health Care System.
“For adults we’re seeing no sustained improvements in insulin release in any of the treatment groups, and we need to start rethinking what approaches we might want to use,” said Kahn.
