Symptoms of gestational diabetes

Symptoms of gestational diabetes Symptoms of gestational diabetes Symptoms of gestational diabetes

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Although obesity and lack of physical activity both raise the risk of type 2 diabetes in women, obesity appears to be the more important factor, researchers report in the journal Diabetes Care.

Dr. Frank Hu of the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, and colleagues note that the relative contribution of obesity and inactivity to the risk of developing type 2 diabetes remains controversial.

To investigate further, the researchers monitored 68,907 women taking part in the Nurses’ Health Study, a large ongoing study that is evaluating women’s health over time. The women in the current trial had no history of diabetes, cardiovascular disease or cancer at study entry. During 16 years of follow-up, there were 4,030 incident cases of type 2 diabetes.

After allowing for age, smoking, and other diabetes-associated factors, the risk of type 2 diabetes increased progressively with increasing body mass index (BMI – the ratio of height to weight often used to determine if someone is overweight or too thin). The risk also increased with waist circumference, and decreased with physical activity levels.

Using women who had a healthy weight (BMI of less than 25) and were physically active as the reference group, the relative risks of type 2 diabetes were 16.75 in women with a BMI of 30 or more and were inactive. The corresponding risk in obese women who were active was 10.74. In women who were lean but inactive, the relative risk was 2.08.

Although both variables were significant predictors of type 2 diabetes, the researchers found that the association for waist circumference was substantially stronger than that for physical inactivity.

They researchers conclude that “the magnitude of risk contributed by obesity is much greater than that imparted by lack of physical activity,” and therefore “weight loss and maintenance of healthy weight should be emphasized as an eventual goal to prevent the onset of type 2 diabetes.”

Source:Reuters

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – For older people with diabetes, the condition does not increase the likelihood that they’ll develop Alzheimer’s disease, according to a report in the medical journal Neurology. However, diabetes is associated with areas of brain damage called cerebral infarction which can impair mental capacity.

Dr. Zoe Arvanitakis from Rush University Medical Center, Chicago, Illinois and colleagues reviewed autopsy results from 233 older participants in the Religious Orders Study.

The team found just over one third of participants had one or more cerebral infarctions, and patients with diabetes were about 2.5 times more likely than others to have cerebral infarction.

In contrast, the levels of Alzheimer-type damage were similar between subjects with and without diabetes.

“This finding is interesting,” Arvanitakis said, “given that several recent large epidemiologic studies have found that diabetes increases risk of clinically-diagnosed Alzheimer’s disease by about two-to-three fold.”

“Diabetes increases risk of dementia, clinically-diagnosed Alzheimer’s disease, and is associated with cognitive impairment and decline in cognition, Arvanitakis pointed out. “Researchers need to better understand mechanisms underlying these relations. This understanding may contribute toward decreasing effects of diabetes on the brain.”

Sorce: Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Researchers said on Sunday they had homed in on five areas of DNA that could account for 70 percent of the genetic risk for type-2 diabetes.

They identified four different areas of genetic variation that conferred a significant risk of developing diabetes and confirmed that a fifth area, a gene called TCF7L2 suspected in diabetes, is associated with the disease.

Writing in the journal Nature, the international team of researchers said their findings would help other scientists find causes and possible treatments for diabetes. They also said it showed it was useful to scan people’s entire genomes to look for disease-causing genes.

“Our new findings mean that we can create a good genetic test to predict people’s risk of developing this type of diabetes,” said Philippe Froguel of Imperial College London, who worked on the study.

Type-2 or adult onset diabetes is becoming more and more common around the world and is even being found now in children. It is associated with a rich diet and a lack of exercise.

“The rapidly increasing prevalence of type 2 diabetes mellitus is thought to be due to environmental factors, such as increased availability of food and decreased opportunity and motivation for physical activity, acting on genetically susceptible individuals,” the researchers wrote.

Constantin Polychronakos of McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, and colleagues tested nearly 7,000 volunteers — most with diabetes and many with a known family history of the disease.

They used new gene chip technology that allowed them to quickly screen for many of the tiny differences in the complex genetic code of DNA.

They found four new areas that appear involved in insulin secretion and pancreatic development. One gene encodes a protein that helps move zinc ions around and is found solely in the beta cells, the pancreatic cells that make and release insulin.

Many of the diabetes-linked variations seem to be the “older” version of the DNA sequence, suggesting that human beings evolved to be susceptible to diabetes. This would support the theory that biological traits that helped human beings survive famines have become disease-causing in times of plenty, they said.

Source: reuters

Symptoms of gestational diabetes Symptoms of gestational diabetes Symptoms of gestational diabetes

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