The most recent treatment for diabetes are to be discussed by leading American experts today at a national conference, sponsored by the University of Texas Medical Branch at the Galveston Island Convention Center.
Diabetes experts will provide guidance to health care professionals as to how to prevent diabetes and related problems and how to manage adult onset diabetes in patients, stated leading diabetic Sikh specialist Dr. Mandeep Bajaj, associate professor of endocrinology at UTMB and director of the centre. Researchers, physicians and scientists the American Diabetes Association and Harvard Medical School will speak.
Diabetes cannot be cured. It is a disease which prevents the body from producing or effectively using insulin, the hormone needed to convert sugar, starches and other food into energy. Insulin producing cells are located in the pancreas gland. For decades, the standby diabetes treatment has been injections of insulin.
Some of future drugs utilise a synthetic version of “gut” hormones, produced in the intestines. A promising injection treatment uses a gut hormone called GLP-1, which is known to be able to stimulate insulin production.
Diabetes has skyrocketed in the USA, hand in hand with obesity. There are nearly 18 million diabetics in the USA alone, according to figures from the American Diabetes Association. Texas itself is host to 1.1 million adults.
“A strong family history of diabetes and obesity are important risk factors for the development of adult onset or type 2 diabetes,” Bajaj stated. “Once type 2 diabetes develops the risk of having a stroke or heart attack increases significantly.”
