30/7/2015
According to researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health only 1 in 3 older Americans have their diabetes under control. Two thirds are falling short of controlling the disease. Lack of control can lead to a low quality of life and early death.
According to Elizabeth Selvin, study leader and professor of epidemiology at the Bloomberg School, physicians and medical professionals often disagree about how to care for older adults with diabetes.
“There is tremendous debate about appropriate clinical targets for diabetes in older adults, particularly for glucose control,” Selvin said. “Are some older adults being overtreated? Are some being undertreated? These are questions for which we don’t have answers.”
One factor that might explain why older adults have poor diabetes control is that they are simultaneously dealing with other health conditions that become the priority, leaving blood sugar to suffer.
Yet overtreating older patients with too many drugs or high doses of these drugs can cause dangerously low blood glucose or blood pressure.
“There is a question in this field of how much good we are doing as opposed to harm when we try to tightly control diabetes in older people, because the treatments are not benign in older adults,” said study co-author Christina M. Parrinello.
The researchers said more studies are needed to determine safe glucose control targets for older adults with diabetes, and that patients should be treated on a highly individualized basis.
