Lifestyle intervention ‘offers long-term benefits to obese patients with diabetes’

WASHINGTON - Experts have suggested that an intensive lifestyle intervention helps individuals with type 2 diabetes lose weight and keep it off, along with improving fitness, control of blood glucose levels and risk factors for cardiovascular disease.

Improving blood glucose control and cardiovascular risk factors in patients with type 2 diabetes is critical in preventing long-term complications of the disease.

The Look AHEAD (Action for Health in Diabetes) Research Group conducted a multicenter randomized clinical trial comparing the effects of an intensive lifestyle intervention to diabetes support and education among 5,145 overweight individuals with type 2 diabetes.

Of these, 2,570 were assigned to the lifestyle intervention, a combination of diet modification and physical activity designed to induce a 7 percent weight loss in the first year and maintain it in subsequent years.

The 2,575 individuals assigned to the diabetes support and education group were invited to three group sessions each year.n average, across the four-year period, individuals in the lifestyle intervention group lost a significantly larger percentage of their weight than did those in the diabetes support group.

They also experienced greater improvements in fitness, hemoglobin A1c level (a measure of blood glucose), blood pressure and levels of high-density lipoprotein.

Individuals in the diabetes support group, on the other hand, experienced greater reductions in low-density lipoprotein, owing to greater use of cholesterol-lowering medications in this group.

The report was published in the September 27 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. (ANI)