By SPA
Washington : Aggressively driving blood sugar levels as close to normal as possible in high-risk diabetes patients appears to increase the risk of dying from a heart attack or stroke, according to major government study that stunned and disappointed experts.
The startling discovery, announced yesterday, prompted federal health officials to immediately halt one part of the large trial so thousands of the Type 2 diabetes patients in the study could switch to less-intensive treatment.
“As always, our primary concern is to protect the safety of our study volunteers,” said Elizabeth G. Nabel, director of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, which is sponsoring the study.
Although the reason for the increased risk remains a mystery, Nabel and other experts stressed that the benefits of blood sugar control have been well established for diabetics and said patients should not make any changes in their care without consulting their doctors.
But the findings cast doubt on a major hope about diabetes treatment — that pushing levels below current targets would be beneficial — and would force experts to rethink how to treat one of the nation’s leading health problems.
“It’s profoundly disappointing,” said Richard Kahn, chief scientific and medical officer for the American Diabetes Association. “This presents a real dilemma to patients and their physicians. How intensive should treatment be? We just don’t know.”