So much news, all before Thanksgiving!

 

The Global Cost of Diabetes was reported by Martin Armstrong, 14 November 2016 on Statista.com.

To mark World Diabetes Day, November 16, 2016, the Statista infographic looked at the global cost of diabetes in 2015 and International Diabetes Federation projections for 2040 (assuming it is not yet cured!).

global-cost

 

 

Around the world last year, $672 billion was spent on healthcare to combat the ever-more prevalent disease. By 2040, this figure is forecast to rise to $803 billion with the largest share of expenditure in North America and the Caribbean. Currently, 1 in 11 adults around the globe have diabetes, making a total of around 415 million.

WHERE’S THE CURE?????

PERSPECTIVE: Maintaining Insurance Access under Trump – A Strategy was presented by Michael Sparer, 16 November 2016 in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Donald Trump’s election as President puts the future of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in jeopardy. Full repeal is unlikely, given a probable filibuster by Senate Democrats, but major changes through the budget reconciliation process (which cannot be filibustered) are nearly certain. At the same time, eliminating insurance coverage for the millions of people now aided by the ACA carries its own political risks for the new administration. Complicating matters further is growing concern even among ACA supporters about the long-term viability of many of the insurance exchanges, through which more than 10 million people currently purchase private coverage (typically with federal subsidies). Several commercial insurers are either exiting or scaling back their participation in these marketplaces, and many smaller nonprofit insurers have shut their doors. One study predicts that 35% of U.S. communities will soon have only one available exchange insurance option.

“A better idea, I believe, and one that could conceivably lead to a political compromise, is to rely on Medicaid managed-care plans to offer an exchange plan wherever they operate where there would otherwise be only one participating insurer,” says Sparer. “This strategy could work even if ACA premium subsidies for exchange enrollees were eliminated and replaced by some alternative version of tax credits or rebates.”

Read more: Perspective: Maintaining Insurance Access under Trump – A Strategy

“Rebranding Asymptomatic Type 1 Diabetes: The Case for Autoimmune Beta Cell Disorder as a Pathological and Diagnostic Entity was reported by Bonifacio et all in a recent report published in Diabetologia, 26 October 2016.

Is Type 1 Diabetes getting a new name?  Do we need that?  Do you like the suggestion: ABCD?

“The asymptomatic phase of type 1 diabetes is recognized by the presence of beta cell autoantibodies in the absence of hyperglycaemia. We propose that an accurate description of this stage is provided by the name ‘Autoimmune Beta Cell Disorder’ (ABCD). Specifically, we suggest that this nomenclature and diagnosis will, in a proactive manner, shift the paradigm towards type 1 diabetes being first and foremost an immune-mediated disease and only later a metabolic disease, presaging more active therapeutic intervention in the asymptomatic stage of disease, before end-stage beta cell failure. Furthermore, we argue that accepting ABCD as a diagnosis will be critical in order to accelerate pharmaceutical, academic and public activities leading to clinical trials that could reverse beta cell autoimmunity and halt progression to symptomatic insulin-requiring type 1 diabetes”

Since I’ve had “it”, it’s been called

  • diabetes mellitus
  • juvenile diabetes
  • insulin dependent diabetes
  • Type 1 diabetes
  • PWD
  • AND NOW, ABCD?

WHAT DO YOU THINK????

Read more: Rebranding asymptomatic type 1 diabetes

 

“Diabetes Breathalyzer” Could Put an End to the Pokes, according to paper recently published in the journal Analytical CHemistry, 16 October 2016.

breathalyzerIf research currently being performed at the University of Oxford is anything to go by, however, patients may soon just have to blow into a reusable breathalyzer-like device.

Previous projects have already indicated that elevated levels of acetone in exhaled breath are an indicator of diabetes. There are also various other compounds in our breath, however, so isolating and measuring just the acetone can be tricky. While it is possible to do so using a mass spectrometer, the machines are relatively large and expensive.

The Oxford team’s hand-held prototype device, on the other hand, is compact enough to be used in a regular doctor’s office.

Furthermore, a different research project at the University of Cambridge is working to develop breathalyzers by measuring isoprene in their exhaled breath.

Read more: Portable Device for Measuring Breath Acetone

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